Book Review: I Regret Nothing by Jen Lancaster

Title: I Regret Nothing
Author: Jen Lancaster
Publisher: New American Library
Release Date: May 5, 2015
Pages: 299
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher
Age Group: Adult
Genre: Autobiography

         

Sure Jen has made mistakes. She spent all her money from a high-paying job on shoes, clothes, and spa treatments. She then carried a Prada bag to the unemployment office. She wrote a whole memoir about dieting…but didn’t lose weight. She embarked on a quest for cultural enlightenment that only cemented her love for John Hughes movies and Kraft American Singles. She tried to embrace everything Martha Stewart, while living with a menagerie of rescue cats and dogs. (Glitter…everywhere.)
Mistakes are one thing; regrets are another.
After a girls’ weekend in Savannah makes her realize that she is—yikes!—middle-aged (binge watching is so the new binge drinking), Jen decides to make a bucket list and seize the day, even if that means having her tattoo removed at one hundred times the cost of putting it on.
From attempting a juice cleanse to studying Italian, from learning to ride a bike to starting a new business, and from sampling pasta in Rome to training for a 5K, Jen is turning a mid-life crisis into a mid-life opportunity, sharing her sometimes bumpy—but always hilarious—attempts to better her life…again.

Jen Lancaster may very well be my spirit animal. I Regret Nothing is best devoured with a glass of wine and shared with your best of friends. Jen’s writing is honest, authentic, and funny as hell. This book will have you constantly laughing out loud.

In this book, Jen takes us on the comical roller coaster that is her life. From starting her own business, to learning Italian and visiting Rome, and even buying adult tricycles, Jen will have you laughing out loud at her antics. You will not want to stop reading, as you turn page after page to see what shenanigans she gets into next!

Jen creating a Bucket List was what drew me into reading this book. The fact that, as the title of the book suggests, she doesn’t want to have any regrets in life, is exactly how I felt just 6 months before my 35th birthday. I decided that 35 was going to be my year. So, I started losing massive amounts of weight and, on New Year’s Day, I created a Bucket List and a Memory Jar. Both are currently works in progress.

This book is my life. It is so wonderful to know that I am not alone out there. That I am not crazy. That there are other women in the world that feel exactly the same way I feel. That make the same decisions that I would make. That think the same way I think. That live life the same way that I try to live my own.

I Regret Nothing is both inspiring and motivational. In reading this book, I found myself reflecting on all the things that I have wanted to do, but have yet done. Reading about Jen feeling the exact same way I felt, really makes me want to push forward with my own goals. I know that I have many talents, so why am I not using them to my advantage? I make some killer jewelry. Why not turn that into a business? It’s a hobby I love, just as Jen loves restoring old furniture. I mean, the worst that could happen is that I make pieces that I love and no one buys them. That just means more jewelry for my own personal collection!

Can we talk a moment about the fact that this book has pictures! I mean it doesn’t get much better than that! Ask yourself when was the last time you read a book that had pictures in it. I would, however, have loved them to be in color.

There were several lulls in the book. I went into the book thinking that it was going to be fast paced and hilarious throughout. That was not the case. Jen shared what I would call the in betweens, the moments in between checking items off her Bucket List. In these moments, we get an authentic look into Jen’s day to day and thought process. In essence, Jen gives us a true memoir. Though with Jen’s personality and writing style, the book is completely hilarious, even when Jen touches on more “serious” issues.

The only critic that I would give was that there were WAY too many sidebars. Yes, they were funny, but I felt like there was one on almost every page, if not multiple on each page, and after seeing so many, I felt that it detracted from the story. Maybe simply not saying SIDEBAR would have helped. Maybe a simple * would have sufficed.