I'll Have What She's Having

Starred review from January 31, 2025

In this volume that mines the self-help genre with short essays that pull no punches, Handler (Life Will Be the Death of Me...and You Too!) continues to share about her therapy and her discovery that there's more to life than sex, vodka, and being a talk show host. Her doling out advice and confronting trauma may come as a surprise to readers who are unfamiliar with Handler's Dear Chelsea podcast. Still, her book's anecdotal format brings everyone along on her mission to help others reach their potential. She isn't shy (has she ever been?) about detailing the rewards of her success. She is most genuine in this book as she learns that extending that generosity to others is the key to happiness. Her words of wisdom are specifically geared toward women who are too often told that selflessness is next to godliness. Still, many of Handler's essays also have a broad (pun intended) message about stepping into one's own power that will appeal to her fans. There's plenty of name-dropping, too--a friendship with Jane Fonda, for instance, proves particularly humbling for Handler. VERDICT A funny and upbeat "live, laugh, love" message like only Handler can deliver.--Claire Sewell

Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2025
The comic and television personality turns serious--semi-serious, anyway--in a combination memoir and self-help book. Handler opens these generally short essays with a memory of childhood that closes with the exhortation to keep the child within us alive into adulthood: "Hold on to that child tightly, as if she were your own, because she is." The memory soon veers into the comically absurd, with an account of a cocaine-fueled cross-country trip with a random companion who looked like another TV personality: "I don't know if Dog the Bounty Hunter does copious amounts of cocaine, but he sure looks like he does." Drugs and juice are seldom far from the proceedings, but therapy is close by, too, and clearly the latter has been of tremendous use, if "exhausting in the sense that every new development or idea led to a period of intense self-awareness followed by waves of acute self-consciousness coupled with endless self-recrimination." As the anecdotes progress, that intense self-awareness becomes less fraught. Some of her life lessons are drawn from her experiences wrestling with the yips and setbacks of performing before audiences; some turn into knowing one-liners ("I knew if three men in a row told me not to do something, it was imperative that I do the opposite"). Most, even if tongue-in-cheek or rueful, are delivered with a disarming friendliness laced with her trademark archness: Her account of a dinner opposite Woody Allen and daughter/wife Soon-Yi is worth the price of admission alone. In the main, Handler is a cheerleader for everyone worthy of cheers, and especially women. As she writes, encouragingly, "You have misbehaved, and then corrected, and then misbehaved again, and then corrected some more"--and have grown and flourished. A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.

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