Book review: ‘I’ll Have What She’s Having: My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting’

(Disclosure: I received an advance reader copy [ARC] of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of writing an honest review. However I was not compensated for writing a review and as always all opinions are my own.)

I’ll Have What She’s Having: My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting, by Rebecca Harrington (paperback, 176 pages). Expected publication date: January 6th, 2015. Four out of five stars.

Funny, witty, and fast-paced, I’ll Have What She’s Having chronicles the attempts of author Rebecca Harrington to emulate the diets of the stars, from Posh Spice to Beyonce to Elizabeth Taylor. Her attempts are by turns successful, tear-inducing and sometimes downright disgusting, but she writes about them all with a breezy humor that makes you laugh even when you’re wrinkling your nose.

Whether you’re a lover or a hater of celebrity diets, you’ll groan along with Rebecca and laugh out loud at her observations. Attempting to adhere to a potato-and-caviar dish apparently favored by Jackie Kennedy, she listens to one of Kennedy’s alleged favorite songs, “Limehouse Blues”, which she describes as sounding like “music that would play if you ever had a seizure in an amusement park”. Testing out recipes from Liz Taylor’s diet, she decides that plain veal is “disgusting, a bit like taking a cardboard box that has been left out in the sun, sprinkling it with lemon, and then eating it.”

It’s almost a shame to post this review now, given that the book won’t hit shelves for another three months (thanks NetGalley for the ARC!), but in the meantime you can all add it to your TBR piles and pre-order it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. My only complaint about this book is that it was honestly too short! I gobbled it down within a day and wanted more. Maybe a sequel will pop up in the future?