Review: Tonight I'm Someone Else: Essays

Tonight I'm Someone Else: Essays by Chelsea Hodson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Last week, I decided my friend, Erik, was both beautiful and impossible, and I felt it save my life in a way."

Okay friends, I'm going to say some honest things about this book, because I was given a review copy in exchange for an honest review. That quote I used up there is not from final copy so it may not appear as written exactly but I wanted to pull out something to use as an example.

How did you react to that quote? I predict that your overall feelings about this book will have a lot to do with your reaction to the quote. If you felt a resonance with it, you are probably younger than me and this book will be a great read for you and where you are in your time of life. If you rolled your eyes at it, hang on because most of the book is a lot like that, and you are likely not to warm to the navel-gazing essays of this book. I'm almost 40; I felt too old. I remember feeling similar to how she feels in some of this, in other ways I'm of a different generation that was never so willing to give up independence to feel emotionally manipulated by people who don't deserve that power. I think I learned earlier to see people from their perspective instead of only from my own.

So there are individual essays except for me they bleed together quite a bit. Throughout the pieces, the author is referencing someone who she can't let go of, to ruminate (again) about a memory or a feeling, longing for them and wondering about them. There is a lot about finding identity and a place by subverting expectations. There also seems to be a theme of the pursuit of the feeling of complete and utter freedom or abandon, which could also be seen as ultimate selfishness (nobody knows where she has gone) or ultimate recklessness (nobody knows where she is!).

So, I gave this three stars. I felt like the book wasn't for me. But I can see how others might really like it, and for those readers, I would highly recommend it.

Thanks to the publisher for providing access to this title. I discussed it on a book speed dating bonus episode of the Reading Envy Podcast, where I did say I liked it enough to finish it, which I did. This book came out June 5, 2018.

View all my reviews