by Raven Oak

A Nonfiction, 2024 by Grey Sun Press, 317 Pages

What I Didn’t Like:

I am not as much of a fan of footnotes as the author. While I can appreciate the explanations, it’s mildly irritating to click side notes throughout the story. I will note that the footnotes are correctly formatted for e-readers, which is important. The only ones I had trouble jumping to or closing were the ones very close to the page edge (it wants to turn the page) or the header (it wants to open the option menu on my ereader). Otherwise, they worked great and were easy to close to return to the text.
Overused common cliches and idioms (like blow a gasket) appear throughout the text and footnotes. This is likely because the author is using a casual voice so it appears as if you’re just chatting, but readers who are sensitive to cliches and idioms will notice.
There’s a lot of content in this that requires (and mostly gets) content warnings. The sense of shock that all these awful things happened to the same person starts to get overwhelming. It’s best to take this one in chunks, I think.

The voice comes across as natural and comfortable. This reads like the author sat down across from you and started talking. It’s captivating.
As a former teacher myself I related to a lot of this content, sometimes painfully so. It’s nice to have a raw and honest book about being on the front lines of teaching. The entire book is not about teaching … but the entire book IS raw and honest.
The unsent letters to people are such a great addition! I’ve often written letters to people that I never plan to send, in fact a few also ended up in my blog as the author mentioned as well. It’s just one example of relatable stuff in this book.

Memoir fans. This one is well done and packed with things you’ll relate to. Plus, it has a great voice!

As memoirs go, this one is well done. It reads quickly, feels comfortable, and is packed with interesting information.