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Book Review of Smashed : Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Smashed : Story of a Drunken Girlhood
tiffanyak avatar reviewed on + 215 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


This book was rather depressing. It also wasn't the tale against underaged drinking that I thought it'd be. Yes, Koren is honest about the various consequences of her behavior, and mixes her honesty with true facts about underaged and college drinking that she researched, but that's where it ends. You get a girl with low self-esteem telling you the story of how she got into using alcohol, and used it as a crutch for several years, relying on it to enable her to have the social and professional life she imagined she wanted. Meanwhile, she also tells you about her blackouts, getting sick in the toilet (or not in the toilet), hangovers, and other consequences (the boys especially). While reading this book may scare someone into questioning their behavior, there's also very much a theme throughout the book that almost makes this behavior seem normal. This is partially a consequence of wanting to give the reader honesty and facts. While this is a good thing, it partly backfires, since it certainly makes it seem like everybody her age was and is drinking like this, and consequently makes it hard to use as an argument against drinking, no matter how honestly the negatives are portrayed. Nobody likes being the odd man out.