MixedThe Washington PostAnger pours forth from every page ... The sommelier has sour grapes. And she names names ... Even comparatively minor violations do not go unmentioned ... Selinger’s story is bitter without the sweet ... But readers aren’t picking up this book for Selinger’s farfalle with mushroom-cognac sauce, as delicious as it sounds. They’re reading it for catharsis — sometimes served raw, sometimes scalding, but tender in the end.
Anna Marie Tendler
MixedThe Washington PostRelationship rubberneckers who have directed their fury toward Mulaney have been anticipating a scathing tell-all that would reduce him to ash, and provide retribution and closure for their spurned heroine. They will be very disappointed ... Readers are, of course, not owed the details on the dissolution of any marriage, parasocial fandom notwithstanding ... But this omission gives us an incomplete picture of Tendler’s suffering ... The great relief of this book: Everyone is rooting for her. It doesn’t mean it adds up to a greater truth, though ... But reading about her bad relationships that were not her marriage, which presumably had an enormous impact on her mental health, makes that feel a little hollow.
Emily Nussbaum
PositiveThe Washington PostSweeping ... Nussbaum’s lengthy book occasionally gets mired in the corporate sturm und drang in the C-suites of network executives. Far more interesting are the sections that take us onto the sets ... The book touches only briefly, near the end, on recent efforts to reckon with reality TV.
