This Will Only Hurt a Little

August 15, 2018
A highly candid, tell-all memoir from the cult-favorite actress.In a book that often reads like a Real World confessional or an open diary, the Cougar Town star bares all in recounting her rise to fame: from childhood passion to become an actress to fraught teen years getting in with the wrong crowd and terminating a pregnancy to facing sexism in Hollywood to dating Colin Hanks to landing a role on Dawson's Creek to countless failed auditions to falling in love with and then considering divorcing her husband. While the honesty is refreshing, much like her Instagram persona, the narrative occasionally comes across as narcissistic. Philipps is open about her overwhelming need to be liked and included, a sentiment that provides the throughline of the book. For example, she chronicles the time she dislocated her knee at a middle school dance because she wanted to see why boys where moshing to "Smells Like Teen Spirit." "That is what I get for wanting to know what was going on," she writes, "for wanting to be a part of things, for wanting more....It's too bad I didn't realize the life lesson I was being handed. Because maybe, possibly, it would have saved me from even more pain in the years to come." At the same time, Philipps is happy to dole out some literary retribution, calling out some of those who have wronged her--e.g., she calls Freaks & Geeks co-star James Franco "a fucking bully" and Modern Family director Steven Levitan "a fucking asshole" who enjoys "the joy of being an oblivious super successful white man" in showbiz. But while the author is quick to point the finger, she's also her own harshest critic. In explaining her Instagram use, she writes, "the reason I started the stories...was because I was lonely."Ultimately, the book is a page-turner, albeit one in which the need for the readers' approval is felt on nearly every page.

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September 15, 2018
Philipps, a character actress and onetime Dawson's Creek star, is among the current crop of writers who've landed a book deal on the back of a popular social-media feed?in her case, an Instagram account with more than a million followers. Like her feed, Philipps' book is filled with celebrity, children, and candid self-disclosure. In prose marked by all-caps, exclamation points, and the names of those who've wronged her, she takes readers through her life, starting with a bumpy Arizona adolescence, a tumultuous time distinguished by a lousy relationship with her parents, intoxicants, date rape, and far less grievous betrayals. One especially poignant chapter recalls her first romance, a story of infatuation, abortion, and Pope John Paul II. Philipps excavates the early days of her career and relationship with Tom Hanks' son, then moves on to the vagaries of life as a mid-career actress: Hollywood parties, misogyny, snubs, backstabbing, real estate, and frozen yogurt. Last comes marriage and children and, with them, a midlife resolution: THIS IS WHO I AM NOW. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)