Book Review: "Open Book" by Jessica Simpson
“Open Book” by Jessica Simpson
Publisher Synopsis: This was supposed to be a very different book. Five years ago, Jessica Simpson was approached to write a motivational guide to living your best life. She walked away from the offer, and nobody understood why. The truth is that she didn’t want to lie.
Jessica couldn’t be authentic with her readers if she wasn’t fully honest with herself first.
Now America’s Sweetheart, preacher’s daughter, pop phenomenon, reality tv pioneer, and the billion-dollar fashion mogul invites readers on a remarkable journey, examining a life that blessed her with the compassion to help others, but also burdened her with an almost crippling need to please. Open Book is Jessica Simpson using her voice, heart, soul, and humor to share things she’s never shared before.
First celebrated for her voice, she became one of the most talked-about women in the world, whether for music and fashion, her relationship struggles, or as a walking blonde joke. But now, instead of being talked about, Jessica is doing the talking. Her book shares the wisdom and inspirations she’s learned and shows the real woman behind all the pop-culture cliché’s — “chicken or fish,” “Daisy Duke,” "football jinx," “mom jeans,” “sexual napalm…” and more. Open Book is an opportunity to laugh and cry with a close friend, one that will inspire you to live your best, most authentic life, now that she is finally living hers.
Rating (out of 5): 4
Trigger Warnings: addiction, sexual abuse, toxic men (John Mayer)
Review: Hello, it’s me, Shannon, your resident SFOL Celebrity Memoir Expert! We all know Moira loves thrillers and EE loves a WWII historical fiction novel…but I love a celebrity memoir.
While Jessica Simpson’s doesn’t quiiiiite live up to my favorites (Gabrielle Union’s, Busy Philipps’, and Padma Lakshmi’s, all linked below), it’s a solid outing from one of the “teen queen idols” of the late ‘90s/early ‘00s. I turned 12 in 1999, when Jessica’s debut, “Sweet Kisses,” was released, making me solidly within her demographic, and this book didn’t disappoint.
I mainly look for two things when I read a celebrity memoir: gossip or info we didn’t know previously, and self-awareness. I don’t expect them to be the best-written books ever, or full of major life revelations. But I want them to show us who they really are, with honesty and some humor, and Jessica’s does that.
Fair warning, there is a lot of Jesus in this memoir. I should have expected that, knowing that Jessica grew up in Texas with a preacher dad. It was kind of a lot for me, but I also have residual trauma from growing up in the Bible Belt as a Catholic and being told by my Baptist classmates that I was going to hell because I hadn’t “accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.”
Regardless, that is authentic to Jessica, so it is what it is. And I of course respect everyone’s beliefs, even if you accosted me in high school trying to save my soul.
Now, moving on to the gossip…there is some good shit in this one. Jessica is super honest about her alcoholism and how she hit rock bottom. She’s upfront about having plastic surgery after she had her first two children. She details the long emotional abuse John Mayer subjected her to, in which he basically kept breaking up with her for songwriting material. She writes about how hard it was to be a newlywed in your early 20s with MTV cameras all over your house, trying not to let her career outshine Nick Lachey’s. And she even gets into how Christina Aguilera totally intimidated her at the auditions for The Mickey Mouse Club.
I think Jessica Simpson has gotten the short end of the stick from the media and the public for many years. I don’t think she’s as dumb as she’s been made out to be. Sure, she’s had some famous ditzy moments (which she addresses in the memoir), but she also basically left high school at 16 to record her first pop album and led a very sheltered life. She got married to a fellow pop star at 22 before she’d had a chance to figure out who she was a person.
Additionally, as she writes, “many critics, mostly men, seemed to review who they thought I was rather than the actual work. I would get used to that, but it was a shock to me then. One called me an aspiring trophy wife…” I think we all know how sexist the music industry and music critics are now, but in the late ‘90s, it was the accepted norm.
To that end, Jessica writes about how much pressure she felt to look a certain way, and about how she took diet pills for 20 years after being told by Tommy Mottola to lose 15 pounds when she was 17. About the Jessica Simpson Collection’s size range, she writes, “Hello, I’ve had every size in my closet, so I’d better be inclusive.” The entire book is full of funny, honest asides and she often directly addresses the reader in the second person. Writing about the time after her divorce from Nick Lachey, she writes, “I had a list of guys, and I checked every box. And all my girlfriends were jealous. They still are.” Get it, girl.
My one nitpick with this memoir was that there weren’t any pictures in the Kindle version. Perhaps there were in the hard copy? I don’t know. But I did find myself googling to see photos of her wedding to Nick Lachey, the music videos for “I Wanna Love You Forever,” “I Think I’m in Love With You,” and “With You,” and photos of her wedding to Eric Johnson. I highly recommend revisiting some of her songs, there are some real bops! (The “Holiday” sampling in “A Public Affair” is my new religion.)
As someone solidly in Jessica Simpson’s core demographic when I was in middle and high school, I loved this one for the trip down memory lane, for her honesty and humor, and for continuing to reiterate that John Mayer is gross. If you’re willing to re-examine how Jessica Simpson has been portrayed in the media, I think you’ll enjoy this book!
TL;DR: A gossipy, honest, funny memoir by one of the biggest pop stars of my youth. (I’m 32.) Jessica Simpson doesn’t hold back when it comes to her addiction, divorce, toxic relationships, family, and business sense (she had Vince Camuto include a noncompete clause so he couldn’t work with any other celebrities without asking her!).
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