Everything Sucks: Losing My Mind and Finding Myself in a High School Quest for Cool

In all of my 27 years I have never found a book that touches so well on the trials and tribulations of being an emotional teenage wreck of a girl while also noting the silly, psychotic, irrational, hysterical experience of it all too. I couldn't put this book down! Hannah's story is so unique but there are so many things that I find myself relating to. This books entices you to read faster to see what will happen next. I actually found myself laughing out loud, which NEVER happens. I am in love with this book. I have already recommended it to all of my friends. I've even had people come up to me because they hear me laughing and reading by the pool and want to know what the book is about! I can't wait for more!

Hannah's memoir is fantastic!!! It's a quick read full of her own special brand of acerbic wit. I think everyone could find something to relate to in this book. For me, it was Hannah's fear of sleepovers. When I was young, I also suffered from slumber party anxiety. I don't know why, but I was always so nervous about spending the night at a friends house. As soon as everyone around me fell asleep, I had to fight the urge to call my mom and beg her to pick me up. There are many things in this book that you will find yourself nodding your head to in that "been there" way. Nothing is off limits and at times I found myself gasping in shock, while simultaneously laughing out loud or fighting back tears. I'm not usually a big non-fiction fan, but I really loved this book. It's a wonderful look inside the mind of a teenager who, although her life may be different than mine, many of her experiences are the same. It was refreshing to read such an honest and open memoir from such a talented writer.

Everything Sucks is a brutally funny and honest look of the prep school career of Hannah Friedman, who is attending the tony school as a scholarship student. There are seventeen chapters of "things that suck," including family, mean girls, friends, high school, diets, love, sex, education, home college, drugs, and well, everything, including epilogues! Some of the funniest parts of Hannah's memoir are those about her family. Amelia, a monkey is Hannah's oldest "sister" and was adopted by Hannah's mom, who trained monkeys to assist paraplegics. Hannah's dad is a talented singer-songwriter proficient in a variety of musical instruments. During one chapter, Hannah's family (plus her brother Sam, minus Amelia) and her father's entire band jam into a small van/bus for a concert tour in England. The tour inflicts a variety of humiliations on Hannah including home schooling, tight quarters, dwindling audience interest, a nearly catastrophic accident followed by an equally mortifying and hysterical experience in a convenience store. The chapters about Hannah's experience at Danforth Academy are an insider's view of teen-age popularity, casual cruelty, and the stress of achieving academic success in the midst of experiencing her first love, drugs, sex, and death of a friend. Anyone who attended high school in the US will be able to relate to Hannah's clear depiction of peer pressure, the desire to belong, and clueless adults. Reading Everything Sucks is like talking with an older sister about high school and having her share her swings between cool and uncool, lost and found. Hopefully is the first of many books by a talented new writer.