Review: Yes Please

Title: Yes Please
Author: Amy Poehler
Publisher: Dey St.
Genre: Memoir/Non Fiction/Humor
329 pages
Release Date: October 28, 2014

In Amy Poehler’s highly anticipated first book, Yes Please, she offers up a big juicy stew of personal stories, funny bits on sex and love and friendship and parenthood and real life advice (some useful, some not so much), like when to be funny and when to be serious. Powered by Amy’s charming and hilarious, biting yet wise voice, Yes Please is a book is full of words to live by.

-taken from Goodreads

I love Amy Poehler with a love that is good and pure. I think she's hilarious and she seems so down-to-earth and good-hearted. Until this book, though, I didn't really know that much about her as a person - I knew her personas through SNL, Baby Mama, and Parks and Rec (a show that is near and dear to my heart) and I've watched her with my girl Tina.*

I loved how Amy allowed us a better glimpse of Amy in this book. She was scattered, she confessed she didn't think she'd ever finish, she had other people contribute, she wasn't coy about knowing what we wanted to hear about (i.e. Tina), and spoke freely about what was in her heart. That's what surprised me the most - how soft she is and how often she talks about people's hearts and her heart and she used lots of other big softy phrases.

I picked up this book because I love Amy Poehler and I knew it would bring me a good laugh. However, where Tina Fey's Bossypants made me laugh out loud on the subway, Yes Please made me cry into my pasta on my lunch break. (I'll confess, I mostly cried during the Parks and Rec chapter because she had the nerve to print the engagement and wedding scenes, which never fail to make me cry no matter how often I watch them.) The majority of Yes Please has an underlying poignancy to it that I wasn't expecting. I was highlighting so many little life lessons that Amy was throwing out and shaking my head over how honest she was about mistakes she'd made.

I guess all I can say to wrap this up is this: If you like Amy Poehler even a little bit, you will probably finish this book thinking she's one of your favorite people. And that you should probably watch Parks and Recreation if you haven't already. Oh and buy this book and start it right now.

*Fey, obviously.

Buy it: Amazon, Barnes and Noble