Melissa Explains It All

If you follow Melissa Joan Hart on Instagram, you'll know that she's been promoting her book, Melissa Explains It All, for weeks. Being a huge MJH fan for my entire life, I couldn't wait to pick it up! So I put it on hold at the library and raced over to get it when it was ready.

It's been out for a few days and I'm pretty ashamed to say that it's taken me 3 days to read it cover-to-cover. (I normally finish books in a day.) But although I do love nonfiction books, I don't always find them to be the page-turners that fiction books are, so I put them down a lot more often. I find that after my brain has sponged up a ton of information about one topic, I need to take a break. But nonetheless, I found it an extremely captivating read.



As a rule, I tend to stay away from memoirs because (I hate to admit this but it's true) I'm an extremely judgmental person. When I read Gene Wilder's memoir, I was so disgusted with what I had read, I couldn't watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for a year. I was afraid of what I'd learn from Melissa's book and wondered if I'd be able to watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch ever again without cringing.

So the reason that I picked up this book was to take a step forward in the right direction, to make myself more accepting of other peoples' flaws and mistakes. And I figured that Melissa would talk about drugs, cheating and things of the like. Sure enough, she did and I found myself a bit upset with her stories of her non-stop party days and cheating on her boyfriend James with Ryan Reynolds while shooting the Sabrina movie.



But then I thought to myself, am I going to punish Melissa for mistakes that she made in her 20s? Especially when she's brave enough to air her dirty laundry out to the entire reading public?

No, I'm not. I'm going to accept that she's lived her life and it's not my place to judge, which is what I was hoping to get from reading this book. I really feel like Melissa Explains It All (a clever reference to her previous hit TV show, Clarissa Explains It All) was a well-written, well paced and informative story of Melissa's life. It was written in a conversational tone, easy to follow and provided a lot of insight to a person I adored as a child.



I don't agree with every choice that she's made but I still admire her nonetheless. If you haven't picked up the book yet, I suggest you do. It's a really good read and you should definitely form your own opinion on it. :)

Do you have any new book suggestions?

-Chelsea