Disclaimer: In this review of I Want to be Where the Normal People Are I included links to Amazon in case you’d like to purchase. I’m an Amazon affiliate and earn a small percentage from qualifying purchases. As with all books on my blog, please check parental guidelines and trigger warnings before reading.
I Want to Be Where the Normal People by Rachel Bloom:
Year published: 2020
Book # for author: 1
Genre: memoir
Rachel’s TV work:
I fell in love with Rachel’s show Crazy Ex Girlfriend years ago. See my review of the show here. I had never seen anything like the show. A musical comedy ft a crazy ex girlfriend? Sign me up. Now, after reading her memoir I see I assumed it was more autobiographical than it was because her character’s name in the show is Rebecca Bunch (I know you hate when people do that, sorry Rachel!)
Rachel Bloom was in another show afterwards, Reboot (trailer here), which had some similarities to Crazy Ex Girlfriend, but didn’t compare. Her appearances were the best part of it, though. Ever since the end of Crazy Ex Girlfriend I’ve been waiting to see more of her but I couldn’t find much.
I Want to Be Where The Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom book review:
Rachel, Rachel, Rachel Bloom, you are the epitome of relatable and what I mean by that is even if someone can’t relate exactly to what you’re saying, you’re still relate-able. Reading Rachel’s book was like hearing from an old friend. Not sure why I didn’t read it sooner!
I Want to Be Where The Normal People Are (on Amazon here) revisits different episodes in Rachel’s life: getting bullied in middle school as a theatre kid, her struggles with OCD, her job as the least experienced and only female writer at her comedy writing job and getting famous from her show in a flash.
It’s not done in a normal* way though (*if you read the book you’ll get it). There are regular chapters and then there are random-but-related fairy tales, poems, screenplays, resumes, time travel adventures and Harry Potter stories. I was a little caught off guard by all this but I should have expected something different. It is Rachel Bloom. I didn’t love these different formats, and skipped a lot of them. One of my favorite lines was: I was an abnormal person who could now “pass” as normal and I felt like a spy.
And yes, I got the reference to The Little Mermaid 😉
My rating: 7.5/10, though I’m not sure if you’ll like it as much if you haven’t seen Crazy Ex Girlfriend (trailer here).
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