With grandiosity and rue ... In its most engaging moments, a bedazzled biography of Spears herself, as glimpsed across the dance floor, or through a long lens ... These strokes are indifferently compelling. Weiss falters in building stakes or sympathy for the self he describes ... Reading the book can feel — this is a good thing — like mainlining the sugar at the bottom of a Sour Patch Kids box.
Incredibly entertaining and frequently insane ... Waiting for Britney Spears isn’t strictly a nonfiction account. It’s a throwback to the days of Hunter S. Thompson-like gonzo journalism, a kinetic, extravagantly written fever dream that lands somewhere between a memoir and a roman à clef. True in vibe, if not necessarily in detail ... Feels as vividly real as any documentary account ... With great sympathy, Weiss recounts her devolution from an animated and sweet southern teen to a finger-snapping, assistant-terrorizing hellion clutching her tiny dog for comfort to, eventually, an empty-eyed zombie, submitting to an involuntary psychiatric evaluation ... During one of the book’s most poignant passages, Weiss recounts Spears becoming trapped by photographers inside a Malibu Starbucks, pregnant, disoriented and terrified, clutching her newborn ... The Britney of Weiss’s recounting, which ends as her conservatorship begins, is a more 3D Britney than the one in her own, somewhat mechanical 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me.
[A] powerhouse ... That the conservatorship isn’t mentioned in Waiting for Britney Spears feels like a glaring omission. Still, it’s a rollicking, wild ride with buzzing energy and plenty of humor.
