Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

I started this book because I liked FRIENDS and Chandler was a fun character. Just a few years ago I found out that Matthew Perry had a long hard battle with his disease of addiction. So when I heard about his book, I wanted to learn more about his journey, his struggles and (if) how they overcame the disease.

But right from the snippets I read about his memoir, I was a bit worried. The unnecessary attack on Keanue Reeves (how dare you) and the way he talked about Jen Aniston, has be a bit worried. But then again, I thought maybe its the media taking things out of context to create sensational news.

Nope.

The first few pages of the book are really solid. 50 pages in, I was hoping this book to go quite well. The back and forth about his surgery and his childhood seemed to intertwine well. His fears of abandonment and retrospective look at his folks felt vulnerable and raw. I was genuinely enjoying it. But somewhere near the 30% mark shit went south and it only got worse.

I see a lot of reviews mention that the book needed much better editing but that's only the start of the problem. The redundancy in the stories, repetition of the same instances, heck even the same sentences was truly exhausting.

Then there is his words and takes and thoughts. Maybe its just me but the way he talked about every single women in the book was so off putting and borderline concerning. It's hard to summarise here but it left a bad taste. It seemed that the only good parts of this book were when he was pretending to be Chandler Bing telling his story but it lacked the vulnerability, honestly and humour.