I Hate Everyone, Except You by Clinton Kelly

I watched more hours of What Not to Wear as a teen than I care to admit. One of my middle school friends was so obsessed, she went to the salon Clinton & Stacy used to get her hair cut. Despite the fact that I was a epic example of what definitely not to wear, it was my coping mechanism when everything else was going to crap. So, when looking for a new audiobook, I found Clinton Kelly’s on my library Overdrive app, I’d figured I’d give it a chance.

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Synopsis

Clinton Kelly is probably best known for teaching women how to make their butts look smaller. But in I Hate Everyone, Except You, he reveals some heretofore-unknown secrets about himself, like that he’s a finicky connoisseur of 1980s pornography, a disillusioned critic of New Jersey’s premier water parks, and perhaps the world’s least enthused high-school commencement speaker.Whether he’s throwing his baby sister in the air to jumpstart her cheerleading career or heroically rescuing his best friend from death by mud bath, Clinton leaps life’s social hurdles with aplomb. With his signature wit and relatable voice, he shares his unique ability to navigate the stickiest of situations, like find true love in a crowded gay bar or deciding whether it’s acceptable to eat chicken wings with a fork on live television (spoiler: it’s not). Clinton delves into all these outrageous topics–and many more–in this thoroughly unabashedly frank and uproarious collection.

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Review

Meh. I really thought I would enjoy this a lot. I grew up listening to Clinton, I enjoy watching The Chew when I have the opportunity and I really like their cookbooks. I like the drinks he suggests. I think he’s funny and I generally agree what he has to say. Therefore, I should like I Hate Everyone, Except You. Except not.

I don’t know what exactly I was expecting of Clinton, but this was not it. My overall reaction was of blase, noncommittal feelings of meh. Just meh. In continuing my listening to celebrity books as read by celebrities (up next is Drew Barrymore), I can say that from an audiobook standpoint, Clinton does a very good job reading his own work. I think the problem for me came from absolutely not carrying about the subject of each chapter and I found myself actively liking him less and less.

I would think, as a celebrity writing a book, you would want to accomplish at least two things: a, give the reader an insight into your everyday life, and b, relate to people and (hopefully) come across as a down to earth human being. Clinton Kelly definitely gives the reader the former but really falls flat on the latter – quite often, he just comes across as pompous and entitled. Maybe, in reading more closely into the title, that was the point? What I don’t know, as I often reflect on when listening to a book, is if the reading of it affected my perception of the content. Are books meant strictly to be read? Is the interpretation one gets from reading the real one and is automatically distorted when translated into audio? This is the question I’ve asked myself repeatedly this year, and one that I may never have a straight answer to.

Overall, I could do without this book. There were moments of brevity which I appreciated, none of his stories dragged on as other celebrity memoirs seem to do, and there were moments when I smiled, but overall, I feel like it was a dud.

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars

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