Review: Down the Rabbit Hole

Title: Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny

Author: Holly Madison

Publisher: Dey Street Books
Genre: Memoir

352 pages

Release Date: June 2015

A former girlfriend of Hugh Hefner describes how her years inside the Playboy Mansion went from a fairytale of A-list celebrity parties to an oppressive regime of strict rules, scheduled sex, and a total loss of identity, so much so that she even contemplated suicide.

-taken from Goodreads

Hello, everyone! I do apologize for allowing summer to steal me away for a bit. It didn't stop me from reading but it did keep me from talking about my reading!

To get back into the swing of things, here's a review about a more recent book all about the life of Hugh Hefner's former #1 girlfriend, Holly Madison. I, for one, had marked the release date for this one in my calendar (judge if you must). When I was in college I was obsessed with The Girls Next Door on TLC and Holly, Bridget and Kendra often kept me company while I was studying or doing homework. I was fascinated by each of them as people in addition to being fascinated by their way of life - how utterly accepting they seemed of this girlfriend hierarchy they had with a man who was old enough to be their great-grandfather.

I found this story fascinating. Holly had a lot of interesting facts for us that I'd never heard before. For example, Hef doesn't own his mansion, but instead rents it from Playboy, paying per bedroom. She also talks about her time as the low girl on the totem pole, back before the tv show came around and the only people who knew much about Hef and his girlfriends (all 7 of them!) were the people in LA who would run into them when they went out on the town.

Holly paints Hef as a controlling, manipulative borderline sociopath, which honestly isn't that big of a surprise. He's certainly an odd duck. What I had the hardest time with was Holly's own story. I struggled to find empathy as she talked about how lost she got in that world and how unhappy she was and how she saw this life as her only option. I know some people in this world get trapped after making wrong decisions, but I (fortunately) am not one of those people and so I had a hard time feeling bad for her. It's also very obvious that Holly is no professional writer - I had to laugh at some of her attempts to sound like she knows how to write a book. But I'm genuinely happy to know that she found happiness in the end.

Overall, it's kind of hard to rate this book since my rating is so subjective. I personally was thrilled with the sordid goings on and the spilling of secrets and the explanation of Holly's feud with Kendra, but if you have no interest in Playboy and the people who have been involved with that enterprise, then you will care less. So I give it 4 hearts (minus 1 because of how average the writing was and because I get it won't be everyone's cup of tea).



Buy it: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

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