Author: Drew Barrymore
Publisher: Random House UK
Genre: Non Fiction, Biographies, Entertainment
Year of Release: 2016
Rating: 🌟🌟
Release: 18th July 2016
Synopsis
Wildflower is a portrait of Drew’s life in stories as she looks back on the adventures, challenges, and incredible experiences of her earlier years. It includes tales of living on her own at 14 (and how laundry may have saved her life), getting stuck in a gas station overhang on a cross country road trip, saying goodbye to her father in a way only he could have understood, and many more adventures and lessons that have led her to the successful, happy, and healthy place she is today.
Review
Award-winning actress Drew Barrymore shares funny, insightful, and profound stories from her past and present told from the place of happiness she’s achieved today.
Wildflower is a portrait of Drew’s life in stories as she looks back on the adventures, challenges, and incredible experiences of her earlier years. It includes tales of living on her own at 14 (and how laundry may have saved her life), getting stuck in a gas station overhang on a cross country road trip, saying goodbye to her father in a way only he could have understood, and many more adventures and lessons that have led her to the successful, happy, and healthy place she is today. It is the first book Drew has written about her life since the age of 14.
I love a good biography, especially a celebrity offering. It was the first book I borrowed from my library service. I couldn’t wait!! II read the kindle version first but everyone said go audiobook it’s so good.
In the beginning, I felt as if Drew was warming up to pull a rabbit out of her hat, but as I ventured further into
the book I realised there were no rabbits. Instead, I discovered a jumble of stories that felt as if they didn’t have a chapter to call their own. They felt as if they got a mention, if she remembered them right there on the spot, which made for awkward reading. The number of times I kept having to reread over previous chapters thinking I had missed something, which only caused me to lose momentum, certain events in the book got pulled upon often with no new information to add or even finish that particular memory. This spoiled the stories I did enjoy and ultimately my enthusiasm for the book, but I kept at it.
Having been a fan of Drew Barrymore, the actress, I was hoping to hear some more behind the scenes stories from some of my favorite movies. Not for gossip sake, just a little more of what she thought, where she thinks the characters are now and so on. Instead, the movies were glossed over for me for the most part.
She spent more time gushing over and at times bursting into tears, screaming with joy over her children. Her love is infectious for her girls on one hand, on the other this made me feel uneasy. Maybe Hollywood is too blame not solely Drew for the idea that knowing even the slightest detail of a child with a parent of celebrity status is wrong and intrusive.
Recalling an unhappy memory from childhood or any particular experience that didn’t work in her favor at the time towards the end began to feel as if she used this book as a platform for complaining. Yes, her childhood, early teenage years was not an easy one by the sound of it, but when you’ve landed on your feet and conquer Hollywood and give birth to two happy, healthy children, as I reader I wanted to remind her look forward not backward, All that being said I’ll always be a fan of her movies.
The friendships she has maintained with Sandler, Spielberg and Diaz and the bond with her pets over the years were the highlight here for this reader.