Nobody Wants This, My Old Ass, and It Ends With Us.

Week 203.

Hello hello! Yesterday Anne Hathaway confirmed Princess Diaries 3 and I cried. Will Chris Pine be back?? Will JULIE?? If this movie is bad I will never recover. Here’s a recap of my week:

Things I Read

Books

If you’re looking for a book to read, try this list of contemporary romance recs, this list of other fiction recs, or this list of non-fiction recs. I also track everything I read on Goodreads.

• It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover: …..lol. I know I’m weeks/years late to this party but I have arrived and I have some things to say. I have long suspected that Colleen Hoover was probably not for me, and as such I have never read any of her books. Normally I cannot ignore when something takes over the pop culture conversation as aggressively as this book has for the past several years (literally Colleen Hoover outsold the Bible in 2022 oh my god), but I also was just generally uninterested in this. But then the movie came out, and there was so much discourse, and I wanted to be able to participate in it. But because I have a complex about Reading the Book First, I sat down last Saturday and read this cover to cover as fast as I could. I….did not like it! The one positive thing I have to say about this is that the pacing is such that it is compulsively readable, but unfortunately I hated what I was reading. This is about a woman named Lily Blossom Bloom, who owns a flower shop (no seriously), and a guy named Ryle Kincaid who is a brain surgeon (no, seriously!!). They meet and very quickly get into a relationship and then he almost immediately starts hitting her, and then for 200 pages we wait for her to leave, which it is obvious she will eventually do. It also flashes back to her relationship as a teenager, with an unhoused boy named Atlas (No, SERIOUSLY!!) and her life growing up with an abusive dad. This book uses genuinely the most bizarre plot device I have ever encountered, which is that the past story line is told through Lily’s journal entries, which are not regular journal entries but are instead in the format of letters she has written to…..Ellen? DeGeneres? (I don’t even know what to say, that is not a joke). Respectfully, are you all okay???? I thought this sucked, sorry. This story is so overwrought and the ending is actually absurd. I think it is important to highlight the realities of domestic violence, but this book does not really do that. This, to me, is indistinguishable from something you would read on Wattpad (derogatory). I’m so sorry but I found this to be insufferable in basically every way. I did this to myself (despite many people telling me not to), and I will not be doing it (it being read a Colleen Hoover book) again. PLS.

Articles

• Warren Hern, America’s Abortion Doctor: Jia Tolentino interviewed Dr. Warren Hern, and I clicked immediately. Dr. Hern runs a clinic in Boulder, Colorado, that is one of the only clinics in the country that will perform abortions later in pregnancy. This means women fly from all over the country to come see this man, in order to terminate often very wanted pregnancies, because the law prevents them from doing so in their home state. I first heard of Dr. Hern when I read this interview (also by Jia Tolentino) with a woman named Erika Christensen, who had just recently flown from New York to Colorado to see Dr. Hern and terminate a wanted pregnancy at 32 weeks. This interview is one of the most harrowing things I’ve ever read, and it fundamentally changed the way I think about this issue. Erika was anonymous as the time, but has since become a prominent abortion advocate and been instrumental in the passage of many laws that protected and/or expanded abortion access (She also did an updated interview several years later). When we talk about abortion, we have to talk about these parts of this issue, the most complicated, difficult parts, because this is the only way to have a realistic understanding of what it means to legislate away the rights of pregnant people. This interview with Dr. Hern is so good, because he does not shy away from the things that make this such a sensitive topic, but he is also so clear minded in the way he talks about this issue and the realities of what abortion bans do. This is a man who has faced death threats for decades for simply doing his job, and he remains relentlessly dedicated to it anyway. May we all aspire to hold such clarity in our convictions.

Things I Watched

TV

If you’re looking for a show to watch, try this list.

• The Perfect Couple (Netflix): I read the book so I could watch this show, and I thought it was decent. The book is better, I think, but that was to be expected. This has a much more campy, frothy vibe than the book, which seems to take itself and its characters a little more seriously than the show does. I found this very watchable and very well paced, a quick six episodes with an incredible cast. As I have been saying since The Bold Type, Meghann Fahy is a STAR and I would love to see her in anything and everything. Nicole Kidman is doing a truly insane accent in this, absolutely no idea where her character is supposed to be from. This was twisty and fun, a good rich people murder mystery.

• Nobody Wants This (Netflix): Oops I’m obsessed with this! This is a rom com series starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, and I sat down to start it last Saturday and just watched the whole show straight through. I loved it so much! This is funny and cute and so, so good. Kristen and Adam have incredible chemistry, and my decade-plus long crush on him is stronger than ever. The music in this show is sooooo good, I’ve been listening to the playlist on Spotify all week. I’m also obsessed with the fact that its based on the creator’s real relationship with her husband. This made me feel the same way I did while watching Starstruck and Love Life, two other rom com shows I absolutely loved. I will probably watch this whole show again at some point. I hope they make more! This also reminded me so much of a book I read a few years ago, The Intimacy Experiment by Rosie Danan, so if you also loved this show maybe you’ll like this book.

Movies

• My Old Ass (theaters): I loved this movie so much. It’s just the loveliest coming of age movie, about a girl named Elliott (Maisy Stella) who does mushrooms with her friends on her 18th birthday and ends up talking to her future self (played by Aubrey Plaza, who is incredible in this movie). Then she somehow figures out how to stay in touch with her older self, and starts to rely on her for life advice. Normally I don’t love magical realism plot lines, but it works so well in this one! This was just so good, I laughed and I cried and I had the best time. It’s set during the summer on a lake and it was just the best vibes. There is also a truly hilarious Justin Bieber bit in here that made me laugh so hard. And perhaps my favorite fact of all about this is that it was written and directed by Megan Park, who you may know as the neurotic super religious popular girl from the iconic television classic The Secret Life of the American Teenager. I just really loved this movie. Go see it!

• It Ends With Us (theaters/rent): I almost did not watch this after reading the book but I had already come so far, I had to do it. Honestly? This was more enjoyable than the book, to me. Is it good? I mean, no. But it’s better than the book. They removed the Ellen DeGeneres stuff, which automatically improves this by at least 15%. I actually think Blake Lively is pretty good in this movie, even though her hair and her outfits are both insane throughout. The girl who plays young Lily looks EXACTLY like her, it’s excellent casting. Jenny Slate is here and I love her, and I think she is the highlight of the movie. Justin Baldoni is generally annoying to me, but he is definitely hot, sorry! This also changes the most egregious thing about the ending of the book, so I was not as mad about this ending. Aesthetically this is crazy, the sets and the costumes are so absurd. I have no idea what happened on this set, but it seems pretty clear that most of the cast has distanced themselves from Justin Baldoni and not Blake Lively, which, okay. This made $341 million worldwide, so I can’t imagine any of these people are actually feeling too upset about any of this. As for me? I will never watch (or hopefully, even think) about this again.

Things I Bought

You can read about my full skincare routine and favorite products here. If you need a sunscreen recommendation, try this list.

• Anthropologie dress: I bought this dress to wear to a wedding (that’s today, actually) and I’m kind of obsessed with it. I bought it in black because that’s what they had in my size, but I also think the blue color is so pretty. This is so comfortable and I love the sleeves, and it has pockets!! Very fun to wear and I think it will be easy to dress up or down, depending on the occasion.

One Last Thing…

Hunter Harris and Peyton Dix on Las Culturistas is the hardest I have laughed in months.

That’s it for me! This week I’m going to watch the new season of Heartstopper and bake something pumpkin. I hope you all have a good week.

TTYL,

Emily