I've Got This Round by Mamrie Hart

I'm just shy of thirty but I already have a healthy suspicion of the "youngins" and their new-fangled Instapics and their Snaptalks and their YouTubes. As if the music weren't bad enough - I see you, with your Carly Biebers and your Demi Jonas Grandes, thank you, next - they're obsessed with people who literally just sit in front of you and start telling you unsolicited stories that go nowhere. What used to make people change seats next to you on a bus now gets you millions of subscribers. Go figure! Kids!

Of course, if anyone is famous enough, they'll be asked to write a memoir, and now that YouTubes have finally got on, the YouTube celebrity memoir is a Thing. The first one I read was by Shane Dawson, and if there was a pool big enough and deep enough, I'd have drop-kicked my copy into it so it would sink all the way to the bottom of the earth to chill and share rape jokes with tubeworns and angler fish in the hydrothermal vent community.

When I picked up a copy of Mamrie Hart's first memoir at the used bookstore, I had never actually heard of her. I thought her blouse was cute and she had a good-natured but slightly evil smile that said, "Trust me; you'll regret it, tho." OK, I thought, being the goofy sap that I am, and I bought the book. To my surprise, I actually loved it. Reading the book is like being an introvert and having your crazy extroverted friend drag you to a dive bar - you're terrified, way out of your comfort zone, but also fascinated (who knows? this could go into your memoirs someday), and also there is booze! The writing style was kind of unpolished, and she had some goofy phrases, but the stories more than made up for it.

When I'VE GOT THIS ROUND showed up on Netgalley, and I saw her smiling another good-natured but slightly evil smile and wearing another cute blouse (seriously, where does she get her clothes?), I thought, "You win, Mamrie. You win." I applied for the book and got it - shockingly, because this book seemed too cool-for-school for me, and I have a rep for going to town on pop-cultural memoirs I didn't like - and was dragged on yet another crazy, booze-filled adventure.

I'VE GOT THIS ROUND was even better than YOU DESERVE A DRINK. I don't know if she sat down with a notepad and looked at all her negative reviews, or if she hired a better editor, or both, but the writing in this book was snappy and polished. All the clunky phrases from the previous book had been sanded down, so the result was as smooth as CÎROC vodka. Also, her stories were even more wild and hilarious, to the point where I felt exhausted even reading about them. Between being stuck on an airplane next to a judgemental cam girl and going on a cruise with the Backstreet Boys, I couldn't decide whether her life was goals or My Worst Introvert Nightmare™. Maybe both.

Honestly, though, I like this girl. She is officially free to be my  VIP Trash Gold Card BFF™ any time she wants, although since she's got Grace Helbig, she probably wouldn't settle for me. Understandable. Still, I know some amazing bars in San Francisco, so any time you want to hang, feel free to call me maybe (that's one of those Carly Bieber songs I was mentioning earlier, FYI), although I have a two-drink limit and a midnight curfew, so on the other hand, maybe not.

P.S. Netgalley did me seriously dirty on this arc. There were odd spaces between words, some paragraphs would mysteriously disappear when you scrolled down the page in the reading app (???), and - the most egregious offense of all: none of the pictures showed up in the book! 1-800-FIX-THAT. I'm sure you won't have this problem in the finished copy like I did in the ebook, but it kind of ruined the overall High Definition Digital SurroundWord Reading Experience™ for me.

Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!

4 to 4.5 out of 5 stars