YouTube star Mamrie Hart makes your craziest nights look dull in her debut memoir about life’s uncomfortable and awkward encounters.
by Grace Birnstengel
If you’re looking for a challenging summer read that will expand your mind, Mamrie Hart’s You Deserve a Drink (released May 26) is not the place to go—and Hart knows it.“I wrote a book, you guys. This is big. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I don’t even read books, let alone write them,” Hart writes in her debut book’s introduction.
But if you’re looking for the feeling you get when you reunite with your best friend and you spend all night reminiscing about the questionable things you’ve seen and done together, this book is a pretty good start.
Mamrie Hart is best known not as an author, but as the host of YouTube series “You Deserve a Drink,” where every week she makes a personalized, unique cocktail for someone she thinks, well, deserves a drink. As a former bartender, mixing up fancy concoctions comes naturally to Hart. Who exactly deserves a drink depends on the week. It could be a fellow YouTuber, celebrity, or someone just having a rough week. But the best part of Hart’s show is not her detailed instructions on how to make ingredients like ginger simple syrup, it’s her cringe-worthy puns and self-deprecating sense of humor—two things also found throughout her book.
You Deserve a Drink takes the reader on an unfiltered and shameless adventure through Hart’s most embarrassing, impressive, and drunken moments. Each chapter starts with a drink recipe symbolic of the story to come; for example, “Leaves of Three Martini” accompanies the tale of Hart accidentally wiping her vagina with poison ivy in the woods.
Hart switches subjects every ten pages or so, making for a quick and engaging read. She explores desperately wanting glamour shots as a kid, her love of extravagantly themed birthday parties (think ‘80s prom kickball or a trip to the gun range), and the unpredictability of her bowels when traveling.
With the pressures on women, especially those in the limelight, to be perfect and put-together, it’s empowering and comforting to read about a woman who embraces her flaws and vulnerability like Hart does. This isn’t a new concept; fellow memoir-writers Amy Poehler and Tina Fey practiced this same notion of exposing insecurities and struggles, but it feels different with Hart. Perhaps she is more relatable because she hasn’t reached stardom-level fame like the aforementioned female comedians, or perhaps, dare I say it, she’s just funnier.
Sure, You Deserve a Drink contains a lot of ridiculous stories just for pure enjoyment (after all, the tagline is “Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery”), but the book isn’t without a takeaway. Above all, Hart helps her readers feel confident. After a chapter called “Grooming Fails” where Hart spends ten pages detailing her inability to do things like pluck her eyebrows and do her nails, she ends on the line: “But even with all these gripes, the fact remains… I still look fine as hell.” Hart suggests pouring yourself a drink to enjoy while reading her book, but I think this book is best read sober, so as not to miss any of Hart’s subtle wisdom.
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Grace is an editorial assistant at The Riveter. She currently studies journalism and gender studies at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where she is the editor-in-chief of the student-run magazine, The Wake. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram @gracebirnstengel.
