great gowns, beautiful gowns: i'm glad my mom died by jennette mccurdy

love a stunt queen title!!!!!!!!!

there is a reason it is STILL hard to get your hands on a physical copy of this book. i have been reading celebrity biographies and memoirs since before i could fully grasp multiplication tables, but nothing has ever come close to the way jennette wrote this book.

originally a one woman show beautifully transferred into literary form post-covid, i’m glad my mom died is equal parts brutal and hopeful. as the name suggests !spoiler alert! her mom died. the book details jennette’s relationship with her mom, her body, food, her career, her faith, love, codependency, and so much more. i have always embraced the more sinister sides of finding comedy through pain. so this book felt like it was written for me. i did not realise how much other people shy away from the uncomfortable conversations until we read it last month in a book club i’m in.

there are so many heavy subjects broached that made my friends not even finish the book. or even use a book cover because they did not like even lookin…