Sunday, September 27, 2009

The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance by Elna Baker

Amazon.com:

Writer, actress, and gorgeous stand up comedian: Introducing the Mormon Tina Fey It's lonely being a Mormon in New York City. So once again, Elna Baker attends the New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance-a virgin in a room full of virgins doing the Macarena. Her Queen Bee costume, which involves a black funnel stuck to her butt for a stinger, isn't attracting the attention she'd anticipated. So once again, Elna is alone at the punch bowl, stocking up on generic Oreos, exactly where you'd expect to find a single Mormon who's also a Big Girl. But loneliness is nothing compared to what happens when she loses eighty pounds. . . . and falls in love with an atheist. The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance is the memoir of a girl who distresses her family when she chooses NYU over BYU. A girl who's cultivating an oxymoronic identity as a bold, educated, modern, funny, proper, abstinent, religious stand-up comic, equal parts wholesome and hot. As Elna test-drives her identity, she finds herself in the strangest scenarios including selling creepy, overpriced dolls to petulant children at FAO Schwarz and dressing a head wound with a maxi pad while on a date.

The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance is a fantastic example of why I love memoirs! It has everything you would want in an entertaining memoir, things such as hilarious work stories (my favorite part of the book Babies Buying Babies), to relationship problems, to questioning one's faith, to major weight lose. Elna Baker covers a lot of ground for someone so young.

Elna is a Mormon and it was really interesting to learn more about Mormons and also how it played a part in Elna's life. She's constantly challenging her religion and I thought that was a really honest depiction of religion.

This is probably one of the best memoirs I have read in the last few years, when I saw it and I read the title I knew this author would have a great sense of humor and she definitely did. I was also glad that there were serious parts to her story as well, that she could jump back and forth from something hilarious to something heartbreaking shows just how much talent she has.

I really can't put into words how much I liked this so you are just going to have to trust me. I found Elna pretty likable and very talented and definitely hope she continues writing!

The New York Regional Singles Halloween Dance is released on October 15th!
Genre: Memoir
4.5/5 Stars
ARC provided by Amazon Vine

To hear some clips of Elna reading, including Babies Buying Babies click here!

5 comments:

  1. Loooong title!
    Seems funny xD

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  2. I loved this one too!

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  3. This one sounds awesome. Nice review. I love memoirs too, so I'm glad to hear this is a good one.

    -Lauren

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  4. I love the title of this book, but never realized it was a memoir. I've got to read it now since I'm a memoir junkie.

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  5. Anonymous3:32 PM

    Sounds like a fun memoir. She must be an interesting woman.

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