Eat Pray #FML by Gabrielle Stone – An unfortunate book review

Eat Pray #FML Review: This is a bad book (affiliate link). This is a terrible book. An impressively, gloriously, intensely bad book. I honestly don’t know how this became a book and had to check if it was self-published because I honestly cannot imagine any publisher or any publishing house reading this and thinking, “we can make money from this.” Eat Pray #FML by Gabrielle Stone is probably the worst travel memoir I’ve read, ever. And I’ve read a lot of them.

I came across this book on my library’s Libby app, as I am trying to read as many travel books and memoirs as possible. Why? I don’t know. But this is my life. Anyway, I came across this incredibly cringy title and thought, “okay, why not? It’s free.”

Eat Pray #FML summary

The book began interesting enough. Gabrielle goes through a pretty typical cheating–turned–divorce situation and then, the next day after serving her husband divorce papers, meets a new man and falls immediately into a new relationship. Normal, rebound stuff. But this grown-ass adult woman who thinks that this is the ultimate love story is absolutely instantly obsessed with this man, starts planning her future with him, and then dumps her a month later. Not before inviting her on a month-long trip to Europe that he was already going on.

Despite their breakup, she decides to go on the trip anyway and honestly thinks she is discovering Europe. The way she talks about her adventure (she literally calls it “a cross-the-world trip”), she earnestly writes as if she is Magellan discovering a new continent. The level of concern that her family seems to carry for her matches the concern for a toddler going into Afghanistan. It makes no sense, and she reports that everybody finds her to be the strongest, most passionate, most amazing woman on the planet, but also kind of an idiot? Who doesn’t know how to navigate the world?

Eat Pray #FML is the most cringe-inducing book on Planet Earth

There were times while reading this that I physically cringed. It takes a lot for me to physically cringe, but this book accomplished it on numerous occasions. She includes pages, PAGES, of the most nauseating text message conversations you will ever read. I mean, honestly, look at this.

When Gabrielle is not showering herself with compliments, she’s writing about how much everybody is obsessed with and loves her and would do anything for her. It’s wildly, ridiculously terrible. Every man who meets her absolutely cannot understand how anybody would ever cheat on her because they would give their eyes to marry her. It’s wild, it’s stupid, it’s repetitive, it’s terrible.

Also, can we talk about that title? Really, “Eat Pray #FML”? I get that it’s a play on “Eat, Pray, Love”, but “FML” is such a dated term. So, it’s a cheeky parody of an old book mixed with an old, dated Internet slang reference. Cool. Very awkward.

Modern memoirs are awkward as hell

Memoirs in the 21st century are taking a hit, as far as interesting narrative goes. With the ubiquity of the Internet and smartphones, nobody’s doing anything new anymore. She shares text messages back-and-forth between her and her ex-boyfriend’s mother and sister, and it’s just so unbelievably embarrassing and awkward to read. Text messages shouldn’t be in memoirs. The Internet was a mistake. I don’t want to read text messages between you and some guy’s mother while you’re in London.

Speaking of London, the writer goes to London, Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona. Cool places, but not groundbreaking. She is not having exciting adventures, and she is not telling them in an interesting way. I finished this memoir out of spite and because it was free. At no point did she do anything even remotely close to an adventure. She stayed with friends, or friends of friends, and never really… did much on her own, in my opinion. This was not an interesting story about somebody doing something interesting. This was a regular story about a boring person doing boring things in a slightly new place. Europe is not the Amazon rainforest, it is not an uncharted other world. I’m not saying she needs to go to those places to tell and interesting story, but 16-year-olds go on spring break go to London, Amsterdam, and Paris with twice as much bravery and half as much melodrama.

Why are we letting boring people write books?

Gabrielle Stone is very, very impressed with herself. Everyone around her is very, very impressed with her too, if she is to be believed. She’s a famous actress (according to her but not her IMDB), a brave and enlightened spiritual soul (I mean, she did go see a psychic), and now a daring adventurer (guys, she literally went to Amsterdam and did a pub crawl, and it was raining). But for real, the entire time reading this book, I literally just kept thinking, why is this a book? This isn’t even an interesting Instagram post, much less an entire book.

The only person worse than her is Javier. He literally professes his love for her and then ditches her within a month. They’re both flighty, superficial, ridiculous, immature people who cannot operate even the most basic of relationships. Maybe I’ve just been exposed to unnaturally fascinating people in my life, but I cannot find anything remotely enjoyable in any single character in this book.

Who is Javier in Eat Pray #FML? Javier is (supposedly, according to the internet) actor Ignacio Serricchio, which was super easy to find online (though obviously, I don’t know this for certain, this is just what I saw online, so this could be wrong). Gabrielle seems really immature, putting his trauma and grief about the loss of his brother out there so publically as a vehicle for her own journey. I would frankly be pissed if I were anyone associated with Gabrielle, as she seems remarkably indifferent to anyone else but herself.

I don’t know who the author is, and I’m sure she’s not a bad person. But the book is so tone-deaf that I can’t fathom reading another one of her books. That being said, I wish her healing on her journey.

Eat, Pray, #FML review conclusion

Worst book ever. Check out these much better travel books like this one or better memoirs by women like this one.