Even twenty years into marriage, Helen Ellis’s husband still makes her heart pitter patter. The New York Times bestselling author paints a portrait of true romance for our times in these comic essays about love, marriage, and her last first kiss.
...hilarious, off-the-wall personal essays. Not just personal but, as her subtitle promises, at times intimate ... It's hard to top the fusillade of violent verbs — shredding cheese, strangling defrosted spinach — with which Ellis described the mad homemaker attacking food prep in her 2016 breakout book, American Housewife. But she comes close ... Not all of the 19 essays are winners, but even the lesser entries feature more laugh lines than a before ad for face cream.
...a satisfying collection of stand-up comedy routines, relatable anecdotes about family and friends, and contemplative pieces on the mysteries of romance. And sex. Ellis gets into some nitty-gritty details and can be delightfully crude, but she never crosses the line into really crass. (Ellis might find this last observation depressing, but it’s true.) She’s also never really mean, even when she’s gleefully recounting wedding-day calamities or listing the personal peccadilloes of loved ones. Her stories build on each other and occasionally meander, making cover-to-cover perusal or just skipping around equally effective. Readers will appreciate her fun, cheerful, and optimistic outlook.
The author finds humor in the mundane, the semi-ridiculous, and the sweet ... While one or two pieces feel incongruous, including a jokey, underbaked bit on housecleaning, Ellis’s writing is on balance assured, charming, and laced with an understated humor that nearly always hits its mark...This delights.
