Title: Everyone You Hate is Going to Die

Author: Daniel Sloss

Publisher: Knopf 2021

Genre: Memoir; Comedy

Pages: 259

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Winter TBR

Daniel Sloss's stand-up comedy engages, enrages, offends, unsettles, educates, comforts, and gets audiences roaring with laughter—all at the same time. In his groundbreaking specials, seen on Netflix and HBO, he has brilliantly tackled everything from male toxicity and friendship to love, romance, and marriage—and claims (with the data to back it up) that his on-stage laser-like dissection of relationships has single-handedly caused more than 300 divorces and 120,000 breakups.

Now, in his first book, he picks up where his specials left off, and goes after every conceivable kind of relationship—with one's country (Sloss's is Scotland); with America; with lovers, ex-lovers, ex-lovers who you hate, ex-lovers who hate you; with parents; with best friends (male and female), not-best friends; with children; with siblings; and even with the global pandemic and our own mortality. In Everyone You Hate Is Going to Die, every human connection gets the brutally funny (and unfailingly incisive) Sloss treatment as he illuminates the ways in which all of our relationships are fragile and ridiculous and awful—but also valuable and meaningful and important.

At Christmas, my mother was raving about this one and demanded that I read this one. I had a bit of hesitation as I’m not usually fan of memoirs and comedy, but I thought that I would give it a try. There were funny passages and I did enjoy some the chapters. However, I didn’t love it and wasn’t ever desperate to get back to reading the book. Sloss’s voice swerved to grating at times and the casual arrogance was a bit much. I just didn’t love reading this one. I might enjoy his standup special, but reading the book form was not the best.

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