I enjoy reading most of Demetria's articles so I was pretty excited to hear she'd written a book. I picked it up and absolutely expected to give it a five-star rating. And then I flipped the page and the next page and the next one. By page 150 I just couldn't cut it anymore. She was just making entirely too many naive and/or dangerous decisions, and when that wasn't happening then there were all these superficial references. I'm actually frustrated about NOT liking the book.
Cons:
#1 If I was into name brands hardcore, maybe I could get excited by the references to a Louis bag or a Gucci outfit. However, an Editor's Letter from Ebony magazine (Amy DuBois Barnett, Sept. 2011) kept running through my mind about women who are so into name brands that the conversation outside of it is boring. I just don't care what name brands you bought. I want to read about something that matters. (Same goes for hair. She mentioned her natural hair a few times and the first time it was interesting to picture her without the style she has on the front. After that, I just wanted the story to move along.)
#2 Points 1 and 2 were slightly annoying, but after the fifth time she reminded us about how many male friends she has, it raised an eyebrow. Tell somebody something once to inform. Twice just in case you didn't hear her. Three times so she doesn't forget. But we get that you have male "friends." Are you reminding us...or you? It went from explaining to bragging to just sounding like a Cash Money video but instead of talking about bling, she's cheering about having a lot of male friends. Congratulations. Many women do. Can we move on?
#3 There seemed to be so much insecurity. She went to L.A., and as soon as somebody wasn't falling all over her like they were in New York, she went into sad mode and assumed it was because she was "fat." Oh my gawd. For real? It just seemed like she constantly needs to be patted over the head. It's hard for me to sympathize with someone being overly sensitive or insecure. And she's physically very pretty so I don't even understand why she'd second guess her own looks. Could it be that L.A. men just aren't as thirsty as the guys from New York? Every man alive is just not going to foam at the mouth when he sees an attractive woman, especially in a place filled with attractive women.
#4 Notice how I put "friends" in quotation marks in #3? At no point in this book was I convinced that any of these guys were her real friends. When a woman has a legitimate guy friend, he's not trying to sleep in the same bed with her, he's not kissing her to see what she'll do, he's not spending all of his money on her and rollerskating to her apartment as soon as she doesn't call. True platonic friendship is a whole lot like being his sister. I'm saying this from the perspective who genuinely has had male friends, the kind whose wives know me on a first-name basis or who would come to me to hook them up WITH the guy friend. The guys she's talking about sound like a bunch of "maybe she wills." These are the guys who keep you around, fake like they're your friends long enough to see if they have a chance to kiss/hug/sex you. And quite a few of her "friends" ended up being boyfriends, so it just sounded like they were counting down the time until she gave in.
#5 After an unfortunate experience at the beginning of the book, I was hoping she'd learn to be a little bit more cautious of the company she keeps. Even her father's speech fell on deaf ears. After that situation at the beginning of the book, which seemed a little far-fetched to me considering he was gentlemanly enough to get her coat, chat with her while she was on the phone, walk her to the door and hang outside while her non-boyfriend-like-a-boyfriend picked her up from another man's house (WHO DOES THAT?). Then one of her "friends" thought it was perfectly okay for her to sleep in the bed with him and some other chick who shows up unannounced and whines about all three of them in the bed together. I'm not saying she's lying. These stories may be true. What I am saying is why would you even WANT to hang out with someone who does that? Why would you continue to stay in a situation like that? I think a normal person would get up and leave, not ask for directions out of the building of someone who is this dangerous or keep snoozing away with this pimpish incident on the other side of the bed. Sleep on the floor or watch a man disrespect another woman while you lay in bed comfortably? Decisions, decisions. I definitely think her judgment for picking the right "friends" are a little off.
#6 The book didn't seem to have any direction. It was just guy after guy after guy, date after date after date. She said at the beginning of the book that someone compared her to Carrie Bradshaw. I don't see it. The book reminded me more of a Samantha story. I'd make the "old" guy (when I was in my early 20s [I'm 29 now] I didn't consider someone in their early 30s as "old," which tells me quite a bit about her maturity level) her Jared, I guess. I don't know if Greg came back around, but in 150 pages we never really knew much about Greg. Come to think of it, we didn't know much about any of these guys she dated or were "friends" with outside of surface deep stuff and some very strange living habits. It's difficult to root for someone when you're indifferent about the author and grossed out by her dates (minus the "old" guy).
I do have a few pros though:
I was amused by the hip-hop references (ex. "ask you what your interests are/who you be with"). You'd have to really be a hip-hop head to get them all. I commend her for not thinking it was cute for a guy to send naked photos to her e-mail (although several of her female friends seemed to think a big joystick (Amazon won't accept the other words) was totally rationale and had no problems touching ones from drunk men and thought it perfectly reasonable to go out with someone that desperate. I applaud her for her views on dark-skinned men, and I felt kinda bad for the guy who couldn't seem to get past complexion. And although I was surprised (judging from some of the other odd decisions she made) that she turned down a married guy, I was more than impressed that she didn't go there...at least in those 150 pages I read.
But I couldn't go on. I went from being skeptical to annoyed to bored to kinda repulsed by some of her decisions. This book was supposed to give women advice, but I absolutely got the impression that she's the one who needs the advice. Maybe in the rest of the book, she had some closure, but I just couldn't cut it. I wasn't entertained. I just wanted her to revisit her father's advice and fall back a little. She wasn't just out having fun, she was putting herself in potential danger. She seemed cool with her father's advice about being the only man to spend money with her for her happiness but not taking him seriously with the other stuff. I hope she found whatever it was she was looking for, but I wasn't interested enough to find out.
