Love, Lust & Faking It: The Naked Truth About Sex, Lies, and True Romance Book

I've only read Jenny McCarthy's Belly Laughs: The Naked Truth About Pregnancy and Childbirth before this, and although I knew I wasn't going to get a whole lot of useful information out of it, I at least expected it to be funny. Belly Laughs had its moments and I enjoyed reading her account of her first pregnancy, as useless as it was to me personally. This book however, was NOT funny and it contains even less useful information.

After reading this book I got the sense that Jenny is a sad, lonely, and insecure woman who will grasp at any new-fangled idea to see her through her day. There is a reason I don't read self-help books; I don't trust some stranger to help me with my own personal problems, especially someone who isn't even a doctor. I look at books written by so-called "experts" in the book store and it makes me think, "Why the hell should I listen to you? What makes you so special that you know the answers to my problems?" I know some people read self-help books for guidance or inspiration, but for me, they're not worth the paper they're printed on.

And therein lies the problem I had with Jenny's book; she uses pseudoscience, interviews with her therapist and friends, and plugs for inspirational websites that had helped her in order to flesh out the bulk of this book. There are even sections devoted to horoscopes for people trying to find out their love sign, playlists for having sex to, and also lists of slang terms for masturbation and the vagina. She also includes a random poll she did via Twitter to round out a Q&A chapter about fetishes. I felt like this book was the culmination of late night Google searches followed by "research" done on Wikipedia and a few well-timed Tweets. It was not something that should have been printed.

Jenny does have a couple of chapters that stand out where she reminisces on her personal love and sex experiences that weren't as bad as the rest of the book. A lot of these turned out to be more sad than funny though, and I really think you get a sense of this sad lost girl who's trying to figure out exactly where her place is. She's very insecure, and a lot of her stories are cringe-worthy with her confessions of abusive boyfriends and her overall self-loathing and Catholic guilt. She has a whole chapter devoted to how we women project a fake self to our significant others and peers in order to be liked. I can't help but shake my head at this: that she thinks all women feel the need to create a persona in order to get men and friends. Sure, there are degrees of this in every person out there, people always want to be liked, but to think that everyone changes themselves to such a degree that the real version is something nobody could love or understand is just really sad.

I think Jenny is in a darker place now after her last failed relationship (which she mentions, but doesn't elaborate on at all) and she's desperately trying to find herself. I can't imagine this book would help anyone feel better about themselves, if only it's to think, "I'm glad I'm not her." Anyone else who is a bitter single woman who loves the latest new age fad will probably find something they can relate to in this book, but I could not. In addition to that, the last few paragraphs had Jenny deciding she's Buddhist, and this just cemented the idea in my head that she has no idea who the hell she is and shouldn't be giving advice to anyone.