The Story of 8 Best Friends, 1 Year, and Way, Way Too Many Emails
I asked the publisher for a copy of Hey Ladies! because it seemed like a book I could really relate to – the lead up to my wedding was filled with many email chains.
Synopsis
Hey Ladies! is a laugh-out-loud read that follows a fictitious but all too familiar group of eight 20- and 30-something female friends for one year of their lives. Told through a series of email chains, text messages, and illustrations, this book takes you along for the roller coaster ride of holiday celebrations, book clubs, summer house rentals, wedding showers, Instagram stalking, brunches, breakups, and, of course, all the inside jokes and harsh truths that only best friends share.
Review
Let me say that I am the target audience for this book. I am the exact same age as the character, a newlywed, literally, this book was written for me. And yet, I absolutely, unabashedly hated it with just about every fiber of my book loving soul. The crap these women pulled is akin to that of women in their early 20s. It rang eerily similar to my experiences as a bridesmaid at 21 and 22. And I’m no longer friends with the brides of those weddings because of behaviors they exhibited that were oddly similar to those of the characters in this book. Women approaching 30 don’t have time for that crap in our lives – we cultivated and culled our friend list years ago to eliminate the toxicity of such relationships. It’s not realistic.
You can tell I’m not a trustafundarian in NYC but I can promise you my sister-in-law is, as are a decent number of my friends and they would certainly no longer be friends with these women. Not a single one of the characters is sympathetic or relatable to the modern millennial woman. I read the whole book because I was hoping, against hope, that maybe, just maybe, we would see some semblance of character growth, but alas, it was not to be.
Last but not least, I’m personally sick of gimmicky books – books written entirely in Gen Z (not millennial) language makes me a bit nuts. Stop with the overuse of acronyms and short handed language. If someone writes a book about my generation, whether they be members of it or not, I expect some semblance of relatable characters. This book fails on that count.
Rating: 5 out of 10 stars
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