This book is full of witty and insightful dialogue and passages but fails for me in that it's missing a strong plot line. I didn't understand why things were happening and why.

Straight away we discover that Cora, our heroine, is pregnant. The first 100 pages are spent getting to know Cora, her relationship with her screen writing partner Bud who seems to be co-dependent on Cora and follows Cora as she meets and falls in and then out of love with Ray who turns out to be the father of her child. I didn't understand their relationship, why they got together, what their fights were about or why they thought their relationship would work at all.

The next part of the story details the arrival of Cora's terminally ill friend William who she has decided to care for in his final days. Again, there is no real explanation as to why this is Cora's role, it's just something that happens. Cora turns to Ray for support and he is there for here. When Cora recovers, they break up again. During this time is when Cora falls pregnant, it fell like a clumsy plot device to me.

The book then jumps again. In the space of a couple of pages Cora discovers she's pregnant, decides how she feels and what she is going to do about her pregnancy and then... well her mother decides that they should break Cora's grandfather out of his nursing home and take him home to Texas... as you do! There is very little mention of the either the mother or the grandfather before this point in the story making this feel very out of nowhere.

There is a lovely link to Cora's child and grandfather at the end but it's a very small pay-off for a largely non-cohesive story.

I just adore Carrie Fisher’s writing style. I’ll always read her books faster than anything else, and I’ll look forward to reading them again and again.

This is probably one of the more plot-driven stories. It’s less “stream of consciousness” (but it’s definitely still there) with her typical charm, wit, and humor, if you appreciate any of those qualities in the sardonic way Carrie delivers them. I definitely do, and this book made me laugh out loud more than a couple times — which is not something I imagined, knowing that the book deals partially with the AIDS epidemic.

more focused than the other two I've read/listened to so I kept present throughout of the short audio book.

While the plot and characters were somewhat engaging, it was difficult to get beyond Fisher's slaughter of the English language. She may be clever, but when each and every sentence contains a simile or play on a figure of speech, it becomes unbearable. I enjoy puns, but these are not clever puns. These are weak, easy puns, the low-hanging fruit.

Thankfully, after 100 pages or so she starts to run low on bad puns, and we can proceed with the plot at a more manageable ratio of approximately one terrible pun per paragraph. Amazingly, toward the end of the book there are entire PAGES free of puns!

I will now resist the overwhelming temptation to conclude this review with a pun.

very fun, very clever, very real. hard not to read it as autobiographical.

For some reason, I enjoy Carrie Fisher's writing style. I would love it if she started writing books that weren't based on her own life, however.

I think I liked this more than the average Joe who might pick it up not knowing anything about Fisher. I saw a lot of her real life in this book, which made what might otherwise be a somewhat hokey read more enjoyable.

This book made me even sadder that we lost Carrie Fisher. Her writing is so engaging, and clever, but also so genuine and vulnerable. She pours so much of her own experiences into her novels... Cora is this person who is constantly aware of her many supposed faults, but wants to be loved in spite of them. She is a devoted friend and family member and the deep friendships are just as important in her life as romantic relationships. There is a deep and abiding love for her child even in the midst of her doubts and fears about parenting. From what I know of Carrie and her life, I think all these things were true of her too.

I am curious whether her family members read any of her books. There is a LOT of her mother in here.

I love Carrie and I think that when she is working on something not nessiccarily hers, and with a strict budget, she can create wonders (her script re-writes and or fixes lead to the movie being better or solid).

But this book was boring. Let's recap one of my notes throughout this read:

"Another scattered female protagonist, who falls in love with a guy who either will leave her or she'll fall out of love with. Add some quirky male friends, a Hollywood job and or job in the business, and bam: a Carrie Fisher novel, inspired by her real life. Also included is meandering and unfocused dialogue that neither adds or helps the plot."

That is it, everyone. That's the book summed up in a short and sweet paragraph.