Okay Fine Whatever is propelled forward by the compelling, self-deprecating, confessional voice of the narrator ... Hameister is a master of the self-humiliation scene ... Hameister sets out to embarrass herself, and is always a hundred percent successful ... Hameister’s quest for love weaves the book together and and brings it to a satisfying conclusion ... Funny, romantic, utterly charming, Okay Fine Whatever will particularly appeal to people who suffer from anxiety. In other words, everyone.
Hameister approaches each self-appointed challenge with an unflagging sense of humor that lifts even some of her safer choices ... Yet too often it seems a stronger narrative was cut for space and levity. Okay lags with an 11-page, Lysistrata-style condemnation of the Brazilian wax, a well-trodden tirade in which Hameister herself seems to go MIA, as if it were written out of obligation ... She writes movingly about the complicated way her first sexual relationship came to a gut-punching end, and her sparse description of her father's suicide—which she links to her OCD—is devastating and restrained.
Hameister is deeply, self-deprecatingly funny like this as she examines her fate as a 'professional nervous person”' ... But the core of these essays is a dreaded trifecta of anxiety, body image ('I will never be thin enough to be the fat girl in a movie') and dating, which Hameister tackles with admirable honesty and wit ... Courtenay Hameister’s Okay Fine Whatever is endlessly funny and brutally honest.
Through humorous analogies, she adeptly and self-effacingly relates this trial for those who find it foreign. She's also very open about her struggles with weight and body image in a culture that obsesses over it ... Okay Fine Whatever manages expertly to blend adventure, romance, mental illness and an extra helping of humor for an entertaining memoir.
There is a tremendous amount of pain (wax) and a tremendous amount of courage (sitting on a futon at a sex club) ... Inspiring, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny.
...an amusing, if perhaps overly insular, rumination on various experiences she has subjected herself to in order to combat severe anxiety. Those with similar conditions will find her tone encouraging throughout ... Her amused, sometimes snarky writing style will surely resonate with young hipsters but seems less likely to reach a wider readership. Nonetheless, Hameister’s frankness about her struggles with anxiety may prove helpful to readers facing their own internal confrontations.
