I really wanted to like this book.
As an avid reader of essay-style books and with all the positive reviews, I had high hopes that Tolentino was going to deliver a set of witty and incisive essays that left me feeling reflective and tickled. Instead I just feel as though I've missed the point, like I've been left out of an inside joke. My biggest qualm with Trick Mirror is that it didn't feel like Tolentino really said anything. Her essays felt more like reports, and she really heavily relied on quoting other authors to the point where I felt her work was severely lacking in her own voice. I didn't feel like any of the topics she brought to light were really revolutionary in any real way. We know weddings are flashy and expensive, we know sexual assault is a major problem on college campuses and are chronically underreported, none of this felt new or interesting to me. Additionally, I was not a huge fan of Tolentino's writing style. Her sentences were often extremely long and felt disjointed. I think the excess of quotes made this even more obvious to me, and it felt like she wrote the whole thing with a thesaurus open. I kept reading in the hopes that the next essay would be better, and was just continually disappointed. Honorable mentions for 'I in Internet' and 'Always Be Optimizing'. I am willing to admit I may have just completely missed the point of Trick Mirror, maybe I'm not smart enough to understand Tolentino's worldly insight, but even so I did not enjoy this book.