Review: My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands by Chelsea Handler

I needed a light and quick read one day, having spent a lot of time in depressing and heavy reads, some of which were wonderful but still rough. So when I ran across a review of this book on Shannan Loves Books, I remembered it was on my tbr stacks and decided that it would be the perfect antidote to hugely depressing. And it was.

Short story essays chronicling Chelsea's love affairs with men of all shapes and colors, some of these stories are hysterical; some are less so but overall, this is a light, fluffy entertainment. I couldn't stop myself from laughing over the tale of the dog who showed up gnoshing on skidmarked underwear just as Chelsea was making a clean getaway. It was both disgusting and side-splittingly funny. She is definitely no holds barred in discussing her own sexuality but she can be a bit nasty when she takes on other people: the subjects of her failed and consummated one night stands as well as her roommate. The mean-spiritedness takes away some of the entertainment value and certainly no one would argue this book is anything but designed for entertainment value.

It did for me what I was looking to have it do but I would be wary in recommending it to anyone with a reasonably sophisticated sense of humor (not me) or to someone looking for an in-depth look at what Handler's choices mean or even to someone who prefers to have a person show growth before the end of the book. Hilarious, low-brow humor leavened with not much else, this is decent for chuckles and a superficial skim of a life I've never led.