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SORRY NOT SORRY by Naya Rivera

SORRY NOT SORRY

Dreams, Mistakes, and Growing Up

by Naya Rivera

Pub Date: Sept. 13th, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18498-7
Publisher: TarcherPerigee

The former Glee star looks back with amusement and a feisty attitude on a career in modeling and acting.

As a child, Rivera did commercials for Mattel and OshKosh and had a role in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air before she hit an acting dry spell in her teens and early 20s. In her debut book, the author pays as much attention to her less-glamorous years, when her family was struggling and moving frequently, as she does to the Glee ones, where she gets into at least a few of the juicy details of cast gossip—complete with drugs and plenty of bed-hopping—that fans are likely to be hoping for. She includes excerpts from the nightly “to do” lists she faithfully kept for herself in junior high and high school, in which entries like “get new eye sleeper mask,” “get some more money,” “take back miniskirt,” “take back shorts to V. Secret” alternate with heavier thoughts such as, “figure out God stuff” and “think about something other than material things.” Each of the chapters ends with a list of relevant experiences for which Rivera is sorry and an equally long one of those for which she is not: she’s sorry, for example, about “wall mounting a TV in a rental,” “hooking up with a married dude,” and “buying cars I couldn’t afford. Eff the Mercedes—I should have gotten a Honda.” She’s not sorry about “learning to memorize lines before I even learned to spell” and the “boob job” she got at 18. Rivera writes frankly about her anorexia during high school and an abortion she had while she was working on Glee, about which she still feels guilty. The volume is illustrated with pictures of Rivera from childhood to the present.

There’s nothing groundbreaking, but the actress comes across as down-to-earth, likable, and humanly fallible.