Book Review: Dirty Little Secrets
I know, I know. Probably too many book reviews and not enough about me. Wait. That didn't sound right. Well, you know what I mean. This'll be the last for a while. I'll resume our regularly scheduled bitching blogging tomorrow.
When the compact Dirty Little Secrets from Otherwise Perfect Moms by Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile was offered up for a review, the good folks at Mother Talk warned that reviewers should be able to handle sometimes disturbing confessions from well-meaning moms. "Sure. No problem," I thought, "I'd love to stumble across some gems that will perhaps make me feel better about my own occasionally shameful moments."
They also promised it would be a quick read - which the slim 112-pager (one quote per page, roughly) certainly is. But instead of digging into some juicy tidbits, my initial thought was simply: "Eh."
Frankly, some of these so-called confessions are so bland I have no idea how they qualify. Perhaps I'm too laid back myself? Take this one:
"I locked my two-year-old daughter in my car and stood helplessly as I watched her take her hair clip out of her hair and put it in her mouth." [emphasis theirs]
Okay, now I get that locking your kid in the car is scary - especially since in my part of the country kids can easily die from heat exhaustion as a result. So, yes, absolutely a "holy crap, that was scary!" story - but a confession? And what, in God's name, does it matter that she put a hair clip in her mouth? I doubt that part would have even registered with me during the ensuing freak-out.
Other confessions were so bland and cliche that I was almost angry at wasting the nanosecond it took to read it:
"My biggest fear as a mother is being judged by other moms."
Um, join the club.
And yet others were less shocking than simply sad:
"My husband would be really surprised if he knew that I thought about divorce more times than I can count."
The last person I heard say something similar actually did divorce a few months later. Which is fine, if that's what has to happen. But reading about it in what is supposed to be a light-hearted romp through the less-than-perfect world of mothering, well it's just disheartening.
But it wasn't all blah. There are a few great, laughable quotes, and a handful more that had my moms' night out group scribbling notes, like the following gem:
"When I'm at Safeway I buy a Nordstrom gift card and charge it as groceries, I can justify it that way."
Or my personal favorite:
"My rule is beer at lunch, wine at 5. Wine at lunch feels like I have a 'problem' but beer just seems OK."
Unfortunately, this book's so-so factor outweighs the laughable moments. I appreciate where they were trying to go, but the authors just didn't get me there. You'd probably get just as lucky if you bring a few bottles of wine to the next mommy get-together.
