04/04/2016
Mollen’s second effort to show readers glimpses of her life, after her essay collection, I Like You Just the Way I Am, is by turns endearing and off-putting. Mollen, the wife of actor Jason Biggs, describes her dizzying life, which includes taking ecstasy while pregnant and offering her husband a threesome to spice up a date night. When her son, Sid, is born, she writes a beautiful paragraph about holding him for the first time—”I wasn’t ready for kids. I was just ready for him”—and promises the reader that this love for Sid would be her impetus to grow up. But the spirit that animated earlier adventures isn’t fully tamed. She goes ghost hunting in her own house and travels to Morocco to meet the people who made a rug she bought. There’s an off-putting showmanship to her storytelling, a sort of breathless look-what-I-did, but fans of her earlier work should enjoy this book. (June)

Praise for Jenny Mollen’s Live Fast Die Hot

“Jenny Mollen is hovering only slightly above sanity, which is the one quality I require in order to be friends with a mother. . . . [A] hysterical circus of a book.” —Chelsea Handler, author of Uganda Be Kidding Me

“Raucous. . . . Mollen employs her singular wit to confront the anxieties of motherhood and finally growing up.” —People 

“I kind of can’t believe Jenny Mollen is an actual person and not a character—she’s biting, hilarious, surprising, oversharing, and relatable.” —Andy Cohen, author of Superficial
 
“With her incomparable wit and acidic wisdom, Jenny now turns her signature perspective to the most terrifying of feminine terrain: motherhood. . . . A generous helping of demented antics and just enough vulnerability to make you cry.” —Lena Dunham, author of Not That Kind of Girl

“Sharp, saucy, and mildly disturbing, she reminds me of a young, psychotic Nora Ephron. . . . You’ll inhale [Mollen’s] memoir like an illegal substance.” —Sarah Knight, New York Magazine’s Vulture.com
 
“One of the funniest books I’ve read this year. . . . Reaches a level of hilarious candor and keen eye for absurdity in the everyday that echoes the late essayist Nora Ephron. . . . A remarkable feat.” —Jo Piazza, Forbes
 
“Raunchy, witty, whip-smart fun. Jenny Mollen is the girl your mother warned you about.” —Jennifer Weiner, author of Hungry Heart
 
“Even a life beautifully enriched by a child couldn’t dampen [Mollen’s] effortlessly snarky outlook on kids, love, marriage, and Tinder. . . . Hilariously candid.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Wild, wonderful. . . . Proof that life is often stranger and always funnier than fiction.” —Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black

2016-04-13
Brazen dispatches on the life-altering effects of childbirth and motherhood on a woman with a stern "reluctance to be a responsible adult." In 2008, actress and author Mollen (I Like You Just the Way I Am: Stories About Me and Some Other People, 2014) discovered her "accidental pregnancy" with her then-boyfriend, actor Jason Biggs. A neurotic tangle of anxiety and insecurities at 28, she writes of contemplating abortion but saw, for the first time, an actual future and a family plan with Biggs, whom she eloped with soon after. Though she miscarried, her second pregnancy was successful. Mollen's melodramatic misadventures and life lessons in new parenting populate the remainder of this candid exercise in unfiltered adulthood. Whether taking ayahuasca in the Peruvian jungle with Chelsea Handler, ghost-proofing a new house, or impulsively venturing to Morocco to meet the weavers behind her pricey Beni Ourain rug, Mollen's opinionated anecdotes are outspoken, often vulgar, and intermittently entertaining. Her rhetoric is not a cuddly, softhearted tribute to motherhood: recreational drugs played a role in her first pregnancy, and negotiations for threesomes aren't uncommon during date night. Most of these incidents seem drafted for maximum comical effect, and some strain to achieve it, but there are a few true motherly moments that resonate as "part of an emotional, painful, joyous journey [the author] was finally happy to take." Once born, did baby Sid really hold the power to vanquish Mollen as the "fun-loving woman-child" she'd considered herself to be? Sure, and she believes that to be a good thing: it was truly time to grow up. Nevertheless, even a life beautifully enriched by a child couldn't dampen her effortlessly snarky outlook on kids, love, marriage, and Tinder. An uneven barrage of life stories by turns hilariously candid and self-consciously flippant.