Michelle Markowitz

The moment I fell in love with The Toast as my internet home started with the words "Hey Ladies."
The moment that I had second thoughts about going into pediatrics also started with "Hey Ladies!" In fact, in my previous life as a computer scientist, no one would ever have referred to a professional group as "ladies," for gender reasons alone. But, as a senior medical student, all of my peers considering pediatrics were women, as was the altogether too cheery chief resident standing in front of us, gathering our professional attention with her false-friendly greeting: "hey, ladies!"

And, yeah, honestly, I love being a pediatrician, but my professional life is one where gender performance is scrupulously policed, and semi-social professional interactions are full of gender declarations, passive aggressive behavior and subtle status cues. So the way that Markowitz and Moss really capture a way in which women of a certain demographic interact with each other, and the nuance captured in a signature really spoke to me. (Normal conversations I have with my husband include lines like: "We can't hang out with her after she was so mean." Him: "When was she mean?" Me: "In that e-mail you just read? Did you not see her punctuation marks??") And no, it's not me and it's not my day-to-day life, but it completely captures where my professional and social life intersect. Perhaps because I am mostly an outsider, cleverly camouflaged to make my way onto these e-mail threads, I find seeing them exposed, dissected and ultimately lampooned hilarious.

But? I thought the blog entries were funnier. I think the pacing was better spread out over months (I binge read the book in two one hour sittings over two days) and that limiting the e-mails to one year lost some of the nuance that, for instance the Jen/Brad relationship took on in the blogs.… (mehr)

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 lost years ago to eliminate the toxicity of such relationships. It’s not realistic.

You can tell me 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 the be members of it or not, I expect some semblance of relatable characters. This book fails on that count.… (mehr)

Lol this book is too close to the truth.
You know those “Hey Ladies!” Emails you get? This book is a year worth of fictional emails and text messages sent between a group of friends.
The pace of the messages picks up when one friend, Jen, gets engaged.
We all know what it’s like to be in the group email about wedding planning.

The characters are intentionally over dramatized versions of people we all probably know.
There’s the dramatic friend that gets engaged and immediately turns into Bridezilla.
There’s the friend who over plans every single detail of every event ever.
There’s the friend who is always trying to sell you something that you don’t want to buy.
There’s the friend that keeps telling everyone that they want to get together but can’t afford the particular plans that the planner friend made.

You guys know real life versions of these people, right? Cause I sure do.

I’d like to think I’m the Morgan of this group, the peace maker who is trying to get along with everyone who will occasionally try to talk some sense into them. I can be Morgan right? Lol

Oh! And there are even the people who beg to be taken of the group mail and no one takes them off the group mail.

This was funny and super relatable.
In real life, we’d also have the bridesmaids that we never met in person too. That situation is rough too. I’m actually relieved that they didn’t add in the groom’s sisters. I’m not sure I could have gotten into any more characters in this book.

Anyway, funny and dramatized version of real life. Strangely enough, sometimes it felt too real and that’s my only complaint lol… (mehr)