Dear Girls

Love, love, love Ali Wong. She's hilarious and irreverent and, despite what she tells you in the forward of this book, really smart. This book is delicious and hilarious and, more than once, I had to stop reading in bed because I was laughing so hard and loud that the bed was shaking and I was waking up my sleeping husband.

This book made me full-on Snoopy laugh. (In case that doesn't mean anything to you, see below. Also, you're very young.)

Most people who know Ali Wong either know her from the Netflix movie Always Be My Maybe (which, for some reason, my 11-year old son has watched 10+ times), or they know her from her comedy specials, in which she is very funny - and very pregnant. This book is an extension of those comedy specials in a couple of ways: first, because she continues with that irreverent brand of honest humor; but also because the book is a series of lessons she's writing for those girls she was carrying in those comedy specials.

The way she writes - the things she writes about - most of us would probably never want to read about our own mothers. She's honest about her body and sex and the mistakes she made en route to where she is now. She writes about traveling the world and what she learned about herself through other cultures. She writes a lot about family - and a lot about sex. It can be raunchy, but there's something about her delivery that somehow also makes it sweet.

Speaking of sweet... After laughing hysterically (Snoopy-style) for much of this book, I ended the book in tears. While 99 percent of it is Ali writing to her daughters, it ends with her husband adding a chapter of his own. He talks about how they met, what attracted him to her and how he gave up a really successful career to support hers. It's sweet and tender and the perfect ending to a really fantastic book.