Ok, so all politicians write bad books, right? Like the entire genre is just long form 'about me' section of a campaign website - personal, but stilted by strict expectations of minimizing controversy, political message discipline, and comprehensibility. Like a college admissions essay for elected office.

That's basically what this was, but I was sincerely moved by the final third of the book where McBride reflected on the premature passing of her husband and fellow trans activist from cancer and her final reflections at the end of the book. I had no idea how tragic her personal history, or how deep her political history was before she showed up on my radar in 2020, two years after this book was written.

This was a milquetoast book by a clearly very smart, ambitious, articulate woman with an inspiring, but unoffensive story. I can see why she is the darling trans token for the Democratic party, providing nondisruptive trans representation and quiet acceptance of incrementalism while remaining tethered to a conservative status quo. I fear congressional politics will extinguish her activist spark, but also see that congress was the inevitable place for her. Nothing about this book excited me.