Verdict: Laugh-out-loud funny and alarmingly bizarre, it sets about to make you feel really good about your own life while making you secretly wish you had a taxidermist in the family. 5-Stars
Reading fans of Lawson’s humor blog, thebloggess.com, will know her sharp humor and gleefully profane vocabulary are all masking something deeper: an even funnier, potty-mouthed mind. Let’s Pretend This Never Happened has all the trappings of a car wreck that you can’t turn away from, but only because it’s a clown car full of circus performers slamming into a rhinoceros that had just been eating soup. Skull-boil soup.
To clarify, Lawson finally gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at why she is a reigning humor blogger with hundreds of thousands of followers, from every day housewives to well-known celebrities. From growing up poor in Texas wearing “bread sack shoes” and waking up daily to see what road kill creature her father had taxidermied and hung in the living room during the night to her own household with a husband who seems more victim-like than life partner, it all becomes shockingly clear.
Interestingly, Lawson slaps the reader upside the head from time to time with touching and poignant self-reflection and confession, especially her soul-ripped-open portrayals of her struggles with anxiety disorder and a rare form of rheumatoid arthritis. She openly discusses the miscarriage of her first two pregnancies in a way that makes you completely forget this book is supposed to be funny, but in every heart-wrenching scenario the humor is back seamlessly by the time you turn the page.
Stories like, “I Was a Three-Year-Old Arsonist” and “If You Need an Arm Condom, It Might Be Time to Reevaluate Some of Your Life Choices” leave the reader holding his sides over the misfortune that Lawson has suffered in the name of making our lives better by comparison. The recounting of how she ended up with so many taxidermied animals of her own that not only have names but now have complete wardrobes, life stories, and foreign accents can only mean we are not as crazy as Lawson is. And that might not be a good thing.
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is available in print and digital for Kindle, Nook, and other devices.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.
