Broder chronicles her battle with sadness in an addictively wry voice that may inspire you to crawl into your own hole of self-aware self-hate and laugh at the cruel madness of it all from within ... to classify So Sad Today as the latest popular entry in a wave of confessional, feminist lit is to undersell its grander preoccupation with the horror and the humanity of the depressive mind. While Broder aligns herself with and agonizes over distinctly female issues, her gendered angst and healthy righteousness routinely collapse into the extremities of her mercurial mental state ... reading Broder’s book is a reminder of how humor can spring organically from darkness—not as a result of sadness but in spite of it—and Broder is unusually gifted at harnessing its defensive power.
[So Sad Today] is just her own experience, her own neuroses, her own fears. It’s all me, me, me, and, my god, it’s beautiful ... This book is a reminder that you’re not alone. Cry with Broder. Let it out. She is here for you.
If So Sad Today attempts to preserve the essence of the Twitter account, it also adheres to the more straightforward conventions of memoir. Where @SoSadToday was the device of a universal sad girl, the book conveys the experiences of a single struggling woman ... Like her Twitter feed, Broder’s essays often left me with a sharp sense of feminine recognition. I would read her accounts of heartbreak, sexual dissatisfaction, and alienation and think, Same—the solitary reader’s equivalent of a fave or a retweet. But recognition is not the same as deep connection, and Broder’s preëmptively dismissive sense of humor just as often acted as a barrier keeping me out.
