BOOK REVIEW: This Will Be Funny Someday

This Will Be Funny Someday by Katie Henry
Publication Date: January 19th, 2021

TW: gaslighting, bullying, off-page abuse 

As a long time fan of Katie Henry’s humor (I recommend following her on Twitter), I couldn’t wait to get my hands on her new book, This Will be Funny Someday. Especially since I absolutely loved her debut novel, Heretics Anonymous (review here). Thankfully, my lovely library supplied me with a copy of the audiobook. Before I started my read, I was a tad wary of the whole high-school girl accidentally finding her way into an open mic, and then consequently getting pulled into the college comedy scene premise, but oh my gosh, I really should have trusted Katie Henry. Her unique sense of humor is suffused in every single page and I legitimately found myself guffawing along to Izzy’s stand up sets.

What I Liked:

• I really enjoyed how much of Katie Henry’s sense of humor (& wit) made it into this book! She had me cackling out loud to Izzy’s sets which definitely got me some weird look when I was in public. It was worth it, but I still probably looked like a freak.
• After my initial skepticism of the plot, I got quite into the story. Especially, once Izzy made some friends outside of her possessive boyfriends’ small circle of approved things…
• I loved seeing Izzy’s character development as the story progressed. Her college friends were a positive influence (mostly) and I liked seeing her slowly shrug off her shell.
• Between hecklers at sets and some other plot things, there were quite a few fantastic telling off scenes. They were honestly so satisfying after pages of Izzy being docile and accepting of so much uncool behavior.

What I Didn’t Like:

• The rest of the character are no where near as fleshed out as Izzy. I get that she’s the main character, but there is literally an “ex-best friend” that is just a 2-D plot device. You never really get an explanation behind their drama and the resolution is less than desirable.
• The pacing of the book is a little slow, at least at first. That could just be due to the beginning being the least enjoyable part of the book, but only because MC is in an un-ideal life situation.

Recap:

Mostly I remember laughing my ass off to the jokes in this book and loving the character development Izzy achieves by the end. I recommend picking up This Will Be Funny Someday if you want to laugh excessively or if you’d like to witness some grotesque jerkwads be incinerated with words alone. It’s magnificent. I actually enjoyed this book so much, I ended up purchasing my own copy from my local independent bookstore! (Thank You Mysterious Galaxy!)

4.5/5 stars

Thanks for reading!

xoxo, Bree