While Too Much is intellectually rigorous, it doesn’t read like an academic text. The book’s complex ideas feel accessible and engaging—like having a great conversation with a super smart friend ... It’s this kind of diction, full of both meaning and warmth, that fills the book’s pages and beckons the reader closer—these are long-shared understandings finally put into words ... You can hear that egalitarian worldview in the writing itself, which manages to be both precise and expansive, inviting the reader’s mind to grow as her work challenges long-held norms and assumptions with complexity without relying on language or terminology that keeps the reader at an arm’s distance ... Every word in the book is chosen for maximum impact and clarity (and not infrequently, a good dose of humor), creating what Vorona Cote hopes are 'only doorways, no barriers' into a long overdue conversation about the ways women’s identities are forced into ever-tightening boxes in the name of morality, duty, decorum, beauty, happiness, or whatever else patriarchy is selling ... Cote sensitively acknowledges the limits of her proof texts and offers examples of how women of color have challenged cultural norms, sometimes at great personal cost ... pleasure is the overwhelming feeling one gets from reading Too Much—a sense of mental and emotional overflow that feels like a good rinsing out of the soul. It’s okay to cry while reading Too Much; I did at least once. I also found myself writing 'thank you' in the margins multiple times, another cathartic reaction to a book that finally speaks aloud so many of the feelings that women have been told to keep tucked away, lest we become unruly, unkempt, or undesirable. Ultimately, Too Much is its own act of defiance, and in reading it, we become co-conspirators in the plot to explode (or at least expand upon) the narratives of women, real and fictional, who have come before and create a more tender, expansive view of womanhood for those who come after.

My copy of Too Much is so dog-eared it takes up twice as much room on my bookshelf as it did prior to being read. In chapters that combine rigorous research with illuminating renderings of Cote’s personal struggles with too muchness, this book is like a best friend who inspires you to read more if only to keep pace with her intellect ... Cote’s chapters about female closeness and craziness in particular startled me with their honesty and probing insight.

To call this book a historical accounting of our modern sensibilities is too narrow. Vorona Cote is more often her own example, and each chapter is built around her experiences. This combination of memoir and critique is tricky to pull off; Too Much sometimes feels as if it’s two books knit together with a fault line that isn’t sealed. Vorona Cote’s academic background successfully comes through in her writing about literature, film and culture. When she reflects on cheating, lost friendships or her relationship with her mother, however, her prose reads like she’s trying to work through the puzzle of herself—intimate and sometimes raw, less eager to find answers than in explaining some truth ... Too Much’s wide-ranging nature—in terms of genre and subject matter—is both to its benefit and disadvantage. On one hand, it’s fascinating (if not particularly surprising) to see how little has changed over the centuries...But the book’s tonal shifts and subject changes overwhelm that throughline ... Vorona Cote casts Too Much as an opening foray into a complex web of study—not a comprehensive review of the interplay between Victorian outlooks and today’s pressures. The book’s ambition belies that at times, and it would have benefited from a narrower focus and approach. But Vorona Cote achieve the goal of illuminating the links between our world and that of the Victorians, highlighting links that aren’t apparent on first glance.

... an energetic and convincing exploration of the tenacity of beliefs that police women’s emotions and their expression. It is also an exploration of the shame some women feel about what Vorona Cote calls their 'too muchness' ... while the depth of her knowledge of Victorian culture is impressive, her handling of Victorian novels and poems, well-known and obscure, is consistently accessible to readers who don’t share her expertise. What makes Vorona Cote’s book entertaining—in addition to being informative—is the ease with she moves between quoting Lizzo and analyzing Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina ... Some of the stories she shares are harrowing, but Vorona Cote consistently finds both meaning and cause for hope in her firsthand history of emotional intensity ... A frank, informed and at times poetic defense of intensity, of her own and that of other women, Too Much will hopefully be followed by others that similarly feature her skills as both a writer and a savvy social critic.

...an impassioned defense of 'too muchness'...in women, blending literary analysis from the Victorian era with meditations on pop culture from the last century. But in 2020, the book feels like an anachronism, and it offers few new insights into how misogyny circumscribes women’s presentation and emotional lives ... As Vorona Cote acknowledges her debts, it forces the reader to wonder what Too Much is attempting to add to that canon in 2020. A singular focus on the Victorians would be distinguishing, but instead it covers a wide range of pop culture, touching on Britney Spears, Moonlight, Demi Lovato, and Beezus and Ramona. Because Too Much fails to decide which tonal register—academic or pop-feminist—it would like to live in, it neither works as a showcase of Vorona Cote’s scholarship or of her emotional, personal work. The unfortunate fact is that the book comes a few years too late. What would have been a sharp work in 2016 is blunted by the fact that, by now, women have been asserting their claim to unruliness for years ... true liberation means dismantling the limitations in the first place, not fetishizing transgression, which is unavailable to those who can’t afford the very real costs of breaking the rules ... Too Much works on many levels. It’s written with passion for the subject and sustained attention, full of compelling prose and observations that will surely resonate with any woman familiar with straining against the edges of the shape she’s expected to fit in. But its failure to go further means it treads old ground. It is simply not enough.

In a writing style that’s part academic, part personal essay, Cote exposes her own struggles with 'too muchness,' from her bisexuality to self-harm to body image, while synthesizing a woman’s place within the cultural context of femininity. Consider it required reading for feminists of all genders.

... as much a memoir as a work of impressive scholarship; it is as comfortable parsing the cultural meaning surrounding Britney Spears’ public disintegration as it is analyzing the feminine mores conveyed in obscure 18th-century texts aimed at improving girls and women ... A scholar of Victorian literature, Cote uses this solid foundation to build her insightful observations on the Victorian age, as well as on modern culture ... As insightful as her scholarship is, it is the element of memoir that forms the compelling through-line.

While seeing the relationship between Jane Eyre and Britney Spears or Miss Havisham and Madonna is fascinating, Vorona Cote’s combo of criticism, theory, and memoir gets muddled at times, and her thesis gets lost in the personal (and vice versa), while her writing runs the gamut from academic to confessional. Readers who enjoy a feminist take on pop culture, à la Bitch magazine, will be right at home.

Though Cote’s blend of memoir, criticism, and history sometimes feels unfocused and idiosyncratic, her overarching arguments are apt. Readers whose tastes run from George Eliot to Lorde will embrace the book’s feminist message.