Painfully true is a great way to describe this book. It's a funny look at life, marriage and parenting, but it's also a painfully honest look at how hard parenting is on you and your marriage and how no one is prepared for what a massive lifestyle change it is. It's only recently that women are being more honest and open about how hard pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood are (thanks, Amy Schumer), but there also needs to be a frank and wide spread conversation about how hard it can be for men, too. Kudos to Birbiglia for not holding back even his darkest moments. There are dads out there who are reading and discovering they aren't alone.

This is a definite must read, and I have to wonder if I'm the only one who kept hearing Childish Gambino's "This Is America" throughout my time with this book. I'm not sure if that was an intention when the title was chosen, but it's fitting. It's being described as a cross between "The Hate U Give" and "Just Mercy," and that's a pretty decent description. Tracy's story shows how hard it is for families with incarcerated family members, how easy it is for innocent people to be charged and sentenced yet how difficult it is to get justice for them, how generational trauma impacts black people, and how racism is alive and well despite white people ignorantly believing it was resolved with the civil rights movement of the 50's and 60's.