I'm so sorry for the things I'm about to say because they're quite critical. I also feel like I should preface with the context that other than seeing a couple episodes of queer eye I really don't know anything about JVN so I'm coming in with very little pre-existing knowledge or impressions or expectations. I guess I did know that this was a Goodreads choice winner one year, so maybe expectations were a bit higher. But, anyway, here's what's not working for me personally, and JVN fans please forgive me 😭

First, I'm listening to this as an audiobook (which JVN narrates), and the narration is simply stressing me the hell out. I feel absolutely exhausted listening. I'm not sure how to describe this right but there is so much force/intensity/effort behind every single word that it feels a little bit like I'm being shouted at? Like rather than sitting and being told a life story I'm having it dramatically performed at me, which is keeping me from relaxing into it. The cadence is also a bit unnatural to my ear, with pauses and emphasis in unexpected places, like a text being read aloud for the first time by a reader that doesn't know where the rest of the sentence is going. It just has me so off kilter.

I also feel like the structure is just completely baffling. At no point have I understood or been able to expect the transition from one topic to another, and the timeline is all over the place. Last chapter we end on regurgitated internal family systems theory. Then get into this one spending several minutes talking about snacks and sports and JVNs commentary on who should have won various Olympic games. Why?? Then in under TWO MINUTES (I double checked) we go from JVN describing eating food with grandma, to saying how those days were a removal from his challenging everyday (which he didn't even really talk about beforehand in order for us to naturally understand that ourselves), to mentioning his relationship with his mom and that they were apparently spending that time together too, to throwing in that he'd buy guinea pigs 6 years later, saying when one of the pigs died, rewinding back to what their names were in the first place, and then hitting us with "which brings me to fall-" WHEN ARE WE. WHAT'S HAPPENING.

I have some killer ADHD and feel like I can follow topic jumps pretty damn well because of it, but I'm genuinely struggling to keep up. I keep doubting myself and thinking that maybe it's my own issue because I struggle with listening to audiobooks more than I do reading written words, so I've honestly tried my damndest to correct for that and am giving it my full attention, listening on 1.0x speed (tried others too), and have rewound multiple times when I find myself confused. And yet I STILL can't track it. I'm going to give it a bit more time and see if it hits its stride and gets to some kind of meat of it (which I'm really hoping it does), but I am strongly considering a DNF.