THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING

Chack cut her teeth as a writer for BuzzFeed, crafting articles like “29 Things You Should Never Do When Banging a Dude,” and now offers this episodic memoir.

The white, blonde New Jersey native reveals how she met her best friend abroad, a curious incident with a menstrual cup, and the time she went camping with some friends and encountered a bear. There isn’t any discernible narrative throughline, nor is there apparent rhyme or reason to the order in which the stories are presented. The author jumps back and forth through time, skirting around her bout with cancer and her decade-plus relationship with her boyfriend. The surface to these aspects of her life is only briefly skimmed, which is a shame, as there’s enough heft there to make readers wish she’d gone deep. The background characters tend to blend together: they all seem to speak in the same singsong, hip-to-skip rhythm. Regardless, the stories are light and breezy, reminiscent of the tales shared among college roommates when they’re up far too late on the night before the big test but can’t bring themselves to actually study. There’s a pleasant nature to these casually amusing tales that makes the book engaging for all its superfluity.

Amusing stories to share late at night.