I wanted to love Dolls of our Lives! I am a little older than the women who wrote this and didn’t know anyone who could afford these incredibly expensive dolls growing up but we all read the books so I was pretty familiar with the dolls. The catalogue was something I rushed to the mailbox for and read over and over again like a magazine.

The topic was fun and the research was solid but I don’t know why they tried so hard to be funny. “Paraphrasing” pop songs and restaurant slogans (???) was an odd, jarring choice to make so many times in the middle of sections that required actual research or an interview with someone. The made-up hashtags (so many hashtags) were distracting, unnecessary, and instantly dated the book.

I cringed through so many pages I wished I could have written into American Girl Magazine and asked how to deal with secondhand embarrassment.

Yes, it should be a fun, somewhat lighthearted book given the subject matter but boy did that element seem forced. To be clear, there is nothing cringy about their love of the dolls and their work around that but how they presented it. It was written by two authors and they seemed to switch off chapters or sections which was a little confusing and unclear at times. One would be referring to herself in detail and the other author in a more abstract way and then a few pages later it seemed like they switched who was writing by how they wrote about their experiences and that of the other writer. It made the book feel uneven. I’m not sure why they didn’t just split the chapters or write in a uniform way.

As an aside, I was puzzled and disturbed by a casual reference to throwing a JonBenét Ramsey-themed birthday party. Why that is a party someone would throw much less admit to in print is truly beyond me. For a book that seemed to pride itself on being inclusive and holding stories, literal dolls, and history accountable, including that you threw a child murder victim-themed party was surprising and grotesque.