Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide From the My Favorite Murder Podcast

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All the best advice your mother never told you.” —Jenny Lawson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Furiously Happy Karen’s latchkey stories were hilarious. I laughed at her after-school food choices of powered lemonade and cheese toast stories. The day the podcast was introduced to me was the day my fiancé called me out of no where the day before our four year anniversary and told me he didn’t love me anymore. I felt hollow, numb, and the depression I had been fighting bubbled up in my veins and threatened to spew itself all over my already crumbling world. He called me right before work and I almost called out. Thank god I didn’t. I watched her cycle through emotionally unavailable single fathers with mustaches and Volvos. They all promised her the world and charmed the crap out of her by being nice to her weird kids: Asher, Leah, and the angelic youngest … me. But eventually all those dads realized we were a hot-mess family of hyperactive neediness that presented itself as a bottomless abyss full of red wine (Mom) and daddy issues (us) (and maybe Mom, but let’s not go there).

I enjoyed some of the chapters (and shed a tear when Karen described her experience with her mom’s alzheimers), but mostly this book just felt like one really long award acceptance speech.We barely get enough time on this planet, so it’s crazy spending that time pleasing others at the cost ourselves”. For me a 'good' memoir/biography is one where the person goes deep and says "this is the situation I was in, this is what I did, and here's how it worked out for me." aka when the author focuses on themselves rather than presume to know what's best for me or anyone else and give unsolicited advice. IF NOTHING ELSE, all I ask is that everything shared is tied around a central theme or purpose other than "I'm so glad there are fans because my life was just like yours before I had them!" Each chapter of Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered, is split between Hardstark and Kilgariff telling their own experiences. This B&N Exclusive Edition includes a revealing Q&A with Karen and Georgia about love, happiness, and their favorite things in the world. Reread in September 2020 and upping my rating from 4 to 5 stars. After reading SSDGM the first time, I fell down the rabbit hole of the My Favorite Murder podcast and count on these women to provide distraction and witty commentary whenever I need it most.

However, MFM is listed in the comedy section for a reason. Karen and Georgia begin their podcast with ramblings about their weeks, their visits to therapy and their personal lives, all with the help of their producer Steven Ray Morris and Georgia’s cat Elvis. Sam: Yes! I absolutely loved Georgia’s top 10 takeaways from therapy. As someone who has also been going to and praising the benefits of therapy my whole life, I found myself both nodding along and learning some new mantras, like "Motivation isn’t necessary. You just have to do it."Freaking hysterical, these ladies have a hilarious way of story telling and I was laughing out loud so many times listening it this audiobook Chapter Four is about childhood. Georgia writes about her early interest in horror and true crime, interests which eventually formed the foundation of her friendship with Karen and resulted in the creation of their successful podcast. Karen provides insight into a typical afternoon and early evening during her childhood when she and her sister would be left to their own devices until their parents came home from work. In Chapter Five, Karen and Georgia write about mental health. Karen focuses on her previous issues with alcohol and drugs and how she came to realize that she needed to change those unhealthy habits. Georgia writes about the top ten insights she had gleaned from her time in therapy, debunking some misconceptions about professional therapy and encouraging readers to work on their mental health with a professional therapist as well. If Karen heard her parents fighting or felt the stress from their divorce she grabbed her books and her blanket and crawled under the stairway to read for hours. Reading was her lifeline. Loved hearing about her favorite childhood books.

Chapter Eight focuses on the theme of true crime that is the foundation of Georgia and Karen's podcast. Georgia writes about when her brother got lost in the woods and when she herself once stayed out all night, terrifying their family members. This prompts her to reflect on the fact that true crime needs to be treated with gravitas as the family members of the victims concerned are still living in that tragedy. Karen continues this argument by writing about how she and Georgia have handled discussions of true crime over the years. She focuses on the issue of victim-blaming, noting how she and Georgia have inadvertently been guilty of accidentally doing so in the past and calling for a change in how we think about and talk about violent crimes in our society. with that being said, I wanted to love this book SO BAD. but did I? no, I did not. I somewhat liked it, at best.but, I must say: I hate how problematic, eye-rolling, cringeworthy and privileged some of their comments are.