Books like Becoming: Sex, Second Chances, and Figuring Out Who the Hell I am

'I’m proud of who I am but I’m well aware that Gwen is more palatable – she’s smoother round the edges. Less opinionated…By comparison I’m a blonde, loud, hurricane of a mess, constantly asking why and demanding who and talktalktalking. I take up so much more space.'Everybody LOVED this book and honestly, I don't know what I'm missing, but I couldn't even finish it. To me there is such a difference between introspection and self-obsession, and this book absolutely crosses that line. So not only is it completely self-absorbed, the author also constantly mentions how hard she is on herself and how she doesn't love herself and on and on and on. Often in comparison to others, like the comment above. And yet NONE of it rings true to me. Somebody who really doesn't think they're unusually interesting probably wouldn't write an entire book about themselves and their sex life, for a start, and certainly not one full of all this faux-humility. There's endless stuff that other people supposedly said about her: ‘I’ve literally never known anyone give themselves as a hard a time as you do.’Firstly, who even says that to another person? And secondly, I just don't believe that anyone could meet Williams - a blogger who literally writes about her sex life for a living - and think 'wow, you're insecure.'None of the 'insults' Williams throws at herself are even really insults per se, just hidden compliments: 'I so long to be the girl who understands who and what she is, what she stands for, is reliable and constant. But that is absolutely not me…I’m forever unfinished business. Isn’t that exhausting?' Is it? Or are you actually self-congratulating yourself on how complex you are, how different? She sounds like one of those girls who goes on about how she never eats salads but always eats burgers, or only wears natural make up. It's just not real humility, it's not a real concern. I don't buy it. Some of the stories here are genuinely funny but it's all so wrapped up in this weird pretense that it becomes incredibly difficult to read. You should sympathise with Williams - her boyfriend dumped her and married her best mate, and that's awful - but as the book goes on, you do find yourself thinking 'oh, come on, love, worse things happen at sea, you know.' It doesn't go anywhere, the revelations Williams has are obvious and don't seem to develop as the book goes on, and in the end I just thought I didn't want to read any more of her pretending all the good things about herself were bad things in an effort to get others to say 'Oh, no, I actually PREFER girls like you, you're so much more INTERESTING!' It's a shame because I like the author's blog, but this was absolutely not for me.