I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales From A Jehovah's Witness Upbringing (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
This book is hard to rate, because the 1st half was hilariously funny and interesting, with lots of irony, and the author did a good job of covering the horrors her childhood, of what she was being taught and dealing with it with humor. The problem was, about halfway through the book, I started to get really annoyed at the author as she depicted herself. She really didn't seem like a very nice person to me – at all. She was selfish, extremely immature, and while I know the immaturity partly sprang from the extremely sheltered life that she led in her formative years, they grew tedious reading about her screaming and cursing and yelling at people for not getting her own way. She screws up her life in every possible way imaginable, and shows no concern for anyone else – she repeatedly drives drunk and thinks nothing of it, and I couldn't help but halfway through the book actually hope she would get in an accident and hurt herself severely. She just was that unlikable. I flat-out hated her. She was a horrible person – and the book doesn't really show her changing at all. She seems ungrateful for what she has, selfish, – I just can't go on enough about how awful she is. I almost didn't finish the book. I had such negative reaction to the character, or the author, that even though I enjoyed the 1st half of the book I had to give it only 2 stars.I had to to force myself to finish. This author portrayed herself in such a horrible way, I'm not sure why – if she thought the self-deprecation was funny, or, as I worry, maybe she enjoyed rubbing our noses in how horrible a person she is. The latter seems to be true, she just wanted to brag about how awful she is and say, look what I got away with. It's annoying. The only thing I disliked about this book was that it seemed to have no real resolution. It was a tale of bad decision followed by bad decision. It didn't feel like the main character learned how to turn her life around beyond getting rid of her boyfriend. I expected this book to have more exploration of the various beliefs of Jehovah's Witness. Though she does say in the end how non-Jehovah's Witnesses help her when her own family would not.It was a rather depressing story of a troubled family and one child's rebellion against it.
What do You think about I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales From A Jehovah's Witness Upbringing (2009)?
oh my gosh, i laughed so hard i cried. and yet it was smart, honest, and heart warming.
—ainstar
Not particularly well written, but manages to be somewhat interesting nonetheless.
—Hoops98
a funny yet sad tale of a woman's break from JW's.
—michaelf1217
