Hungry Heart by Jennifer Weiner -- Review

Title: Hungry Heart - Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing
Author: Jennifer Seiner 
Pages: 432
Publishing: October 11th 2016 by Atria Books
ISBN: 1476723400

Summary: 

Jennifer Weiner is many things: a #1 New York Times bestselling author, a Twitter phenomenon, and “an unlikely feminist enforcer” (The New Yorker). She’s also a mom, a daughter, and a sister; a former rower and current cyclist; a best friend and a reality TV junkie. In her first foray into nonfiction, she takes the raw stuff of her personal life and spins into a collection of essays on modern womanhood as uproariously funny and moving as the best of Tina Fey, Fran Lebowitz, and Nora Ephron.

Jennifer grew up as an outsider in her picturesque Connecticut hometown (“a Lane Bryant outtake in an Abercrombie & Fitch photo shoot”) and at her Ivy League college, but finally found her people in newsrooms in central Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, and her voice as a novelist, activist, and New York Times columnist.

No subject is off-limits in this intimate and honest essay collection: sex, weight, envy, money, her mom’s newfound lesbianism, and her estranged father’s death. From lonely adolescence to modern childbirth to hearing her six-year-old daughter’s use of the f-word—fat­­—for the first time, Jennifer Weiner goes there, with the wit and candor that have endeared her to readers all over the world.

By turns hilarious and deeply touching, this collection shows that the woman behind treasured novels like Good in Bed and Best Friends Forever is every bit as winning, smart, and honest in real life as she is in her fiction.

Review: 

From start to finish, Hungry Heart had me absolutely rolling with laughter. Weiner's writing is incredibly genuine, and there were many times where I just stopped and said, "Jennifer, you get me". I think her authentic voice is what makes this memoir so wonderful. She is easy to relate to and makes the reader feel like they're not alone. 

I loved Weiner's wit and charm, but there were also a few parts of the novel that I felt were a little too much. I really enjoyed the stories about her mom and grandmother, but I felt she was pretty harsh with her sister, and the stories about her dad were tough to read at times. As much as I laughed and laughed,  there were heartbreaking moments as well. Her miscarriage story will stick with me for a while, but the way she wrote about it with so much detail... let's just say I had a hard time getting through that chapter. 

All in all, Weiner's memoir was lovely and the good outweighed the bad. There were funny moments, truthful and genuine moments, sad, heartbreaking, and eye-opening moments. All of the stories combine to tell the story of a woman who wants her readers to understand that she is just like us. I would recommend this to women for a good weekend read. 

Rating 3/5