André
Writing not only this entire book in character, but then framing the audiobook as the character reading her ghost-written book for the first time, complete with rants about the content, misreadings, bickering with the recording people, and demands for redactions, is utter genius.
Her aggressive, repeatedly stated centrism that veers very close to the whole "I'm apolitical" nonsense is annoying as hell but I'll give her that it was nearly 15 years ago and all that stuff that was en vogue to say then.
Sometimes, you just want a cracked listicle expanded into book form. And this is that.
Her humour does not work in a long-form book. It just feels meanspirited here. I'm a fan. I went to see her show last year. But this just ain't it. It feels legitimately bigoted in a way her comedy usually doesn't.
It's a compelling and - to my amateur eye - pretty complete narrative of the MCU's history. You get exactly what's on the tin, with a lot of access given to people across production, and a lot of focus on what happens behind the scenes. If you're looking for production tea or someone to hold Disney/Marvel's feet to the fire, you are not getting it here though.
I had watched the film first and comparatively the characters are a whole lot less likeable here, to the point where it occasionally feels too much and isn't quite the light-hearted fun read you want it to be.
If you had told me a decade ago a film youtuber would be writing one of the most engaging and thought-provoking first contact novels and it would contain direct quotes from the Transformers film franchise I would have laughed in your face
We are all bugs.
Fascinating world-building that maybe doesn't 100% come together for me.
There's some interesting insights here. Not anywhere near 400 pages of them though.
It's equal parts a global history of queerness & drag, and a personal memoir. All with their signature wit and thoughtfulness.
It’s starting to feel like Kepnes only ever had one idea and now she’s running it into the ground
It’s basic YA fare that feels like it could have done with a more aggressive, hands-on editor and I was honestly expecting a lot more.
It's wonderful to have an oral history of Drag Race but this book has several glaring issues.
The biggest of them is that, being produced by WOW, you get a sanitized corporate history here. Various issues are glanced over or not mentioned at all, and critical voices and people who are not in WOW's good graces, such as former contestants Willam, Carmen Carrera, or Courtney Act, or former staff members such as Mathu Andersen, are mentioned but never get to tell their story. I doubt they were even asked to take part. Scandals and moments in the history of the show where it faced pushback from within the queer community are entirely absent, which feels cowardly.
It's also just not very informative beyond the opening chapter, and could have done with much more aggressive editing. Once they recount season after season of the show, it's largely fluff, and information any fan would have been aware of already - you expect more new information in such a long book. There are often stretches where multiple people are quoted saying essentially the same thing, or making fluffy statements with no real content about how amazing the show or the contestants or RuPaul are, and a better oral history would have cut down on all those repetitive, zero calorie statements and removed those that don't add anything valuable.
All that then comes at the expense of the All Stars seasons just being briefly recounted all in one chapter together, as if they weren't just as important as the regular seasons, rushed through, and the international franchises and the expanded Drag Race franchise (conventions, tours, spin-off shows...) getting barely a mention.
It's messy and not at all the definitive history it presents itself as.
This series is running entirely on plot contrivance and unearned plot twists that don't respect the reader but are sure to make BookTok go wild at this point.
One of those books that sounds spectacular in concept but falls rather flat in execution.