GENRE: Nonfiction/Memoir
MY GRADE: C
SYNOPSIS: Jessica tells of growing up in 1980s Texas where she was sexually abused by the daughter of a family friend, and of unsuccessfully auditioning for the Mickey Mouse Club at age 13 with Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling before going on to sign a record deal with Columbia and marrying 98 Degrees member Nick Lachey.
Along the way, she details the struggles in her life, such as the pressure to support her family as a teenager, divorcing Lachey, enduring what she describes as an emotionally abusive relationship with musician John Mayer, being body-shamed in an overly appearance-centered industry, and going through bouts of heavy drinking. But Simpson ends on a positive note, discussing her billion-dollar apparel line and marriage with professional football star Eric Johnson, with whom she has three children.
MY THOUGHTS: The book started out very strong then dropped down to 3 stars. Jessica has always seemed very likable and girl next door to me, if you ignore the fact she had, while married, a nonsexual inappropriate relationship with Johnny Knoxville, who was married too, in 2005 while working together on The Dukes of Hazzard remake. She's very vain, told us at least three times she weighs under 120 pounds, thinks highly of herself, and even referred to herself in third person when talking about her husband near the end of the book, and truthfully I wanted to put the book down but carried on with it since I was almost finished. She's unrelatable, as I'm sure all celebrities are, and the only thing anyone could maybe relate to is someone's childhood, before they were famous. I'd like to know how you go from believing in no sex before marriage to years later having two pregnancies out of wedlock. She's very needy too, always has to have a full house and tells everyone in her life all her personal business for the attention it brings.
She mentions being molested for six years, ages 6-12, by a girl who was one year older, who was also being molested by a male at that time, and mentions many times that she has a drinking problem but with those two subjects there's not much depth. Her parents literally ignored that she told them she was being molested and it was never talked about again, I guess. She never said if she brought it up to them as an adult. They're awful but she doesn't see it. She never said why she thought she began drinking in the first place, if being molested lead to it, and I don't think she ever called herself an alcoholic, but I could be wrong about that. She's a lifelong diet pill popper but never said if she's still on them or if she wants to stop using them. She also mentions God so many times you'd never be able to keep count.
