It was light reading that was really funny in spots. It's a good story to pick up and read a chapter and put back down. Supposedly it was based on a true story but I got the feeling there was a lot of fictional stuff added. It didn't have much of a plot so I gave it 3 stars.

This was a fun read, but I had some issues with it.

Charlie McDowell* started the popular Dear Girls Above Me Twitter feed on a whim, and he got a book deal out of it. Twitter-to-Book deals always seem sketchy to me, but this one had gotten pretty good reviews, so I picked it up from the library. Like I said, it was fun, but as this is a supposed novelization of the feed, it doesn't even have the virtue of really being about McDowell's life, and in parts it seems like he really had to stretch it to make his 'character' have a believable arc, so the book wouldn't entirely read like it was a commercial ploy to exploit these two girls even further.

*He's the son of Mary Steenburgen and Malcolm McDowell, and to his credit, this isn't something he highlights in the book, except for the horrifying story of the time he caught one of his friends, er, jerking his sausage, to a blurry sex scene his mother had done in a film before he was even born.

Make no mistake, the things the girls say are ridiculous and hilarious, but shoehorning 'Charlie' in there as well just felt forced. The book ends with 'Charlie' supposedly having learned something from his interaction with the girls, but I'm sort of at a loss to figure out what that something is. If you just want something funny, you'll probably love this, though. And the ending was pretty great -- I laughed out loud in the coffee shop where I was reading. I won't spoil it too much, but I will tell you that it involved mice, a broken sewage pipe, and the girls not following directions.

If you're looking for a quick read you could do worse than this, but don't go in expecting anything deep.

I started reading this author, Charlie McDowell, more than a year ago due to the popularity of his blog and twitter about "Dear Girls Above Me." In his twitter and blog Charlie provides quotes from two female neighbors that live directly above his apartment that he can hear due to the weird layout of both apartments.

While I have always laughed at the quotes and comments Mr. McDowell writes about his female neighbors, reading through them in a book format turned into a bit of a chore for me. After I finished this memoir I decided to pass on anymore of his memoirs/books, or blogs in the future.

First and foremost Mr. McDowell in book form is not funny at all. He just seems mean spirited and nasty towards two young women. Even though he is given constant chances to do something about eavesdropping on the girls conversations he merely keeps trudging along listening in and feeling as if he is finally somebody since he now has Twitter followers who are laughing at the girls with him. Even after he meets the girls in real life and actually starts to like them he still makes fun of them when he is not outright stalking them to the grocery store.

Second, Mr. McDowell tries to tie his own personal history into this memoir but his background and how his twitter and blog of Dear Girls Above Me do not mesh well at all. Instead he goes and tells stories about his now divorced parents, Disneyland, and how he comes from a huge Hollywood acting background though he does not divulge who his parents are (a quick Google search turned up that his parents are Mary Steenburgen and Malcolm McDowell). Also he seems obsessed with his ex-girlfriend and his response to their breakup bordered on creepy. He would throw asides to their relationship and to her in the memoir and once again it did not mesh well with what he was supposed to be writing about which was the girls above him.

Third, random tweets about the Girls are just thrown in the chapters we are reading and do not make sense in the context of the story that we are reading.

Fourth, I will just flat out say it, he writes in a way that you can take away that he is prejudiced. Frankly making fun of minorities, gays, and these girls along with other women does not equal funny to me.

The only thing that this memoir has going for it, is that it moves quite fast though you are often left confused about what is he going on about now when you start a chapter.

I would not recommend this memoir.

Please note that I received this memoir via the Amazon Vine Program.