If you've read Jenny Lawson's first book, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, or if you follow her online, you know that her head is a very, very strange place--in all the best ways, assuming your head is also a very strange place. I don't generally think my head is a strange place, but I do love the way Jenny Lawson's mind works and the way she writes about it, so maybe I'm stranger than I think I am.
Furiously Happy is much less autobiographical than her first book. She still tells stories about her life, but it's more about what she's been doing in recent years. Like in her first book, Jenny writes openly, honestly, and hilariously about her daily struggles with mental illness. She also devotes more of this book to the theme of being "furiously happy," finding those funny, quirky, personal things that remind you there's good in the world and good in you, defying the voices of mental illness that tell you everything's horrible, refusing to give in to your inner demons.
As someone who has been dealing with depression my entire adult life and anxiety for even longer, Jenny Lawson's wacky, dark-humored, heartfelt ramblings about the world inside and outside of her head are like a big thumbs-up and a comforting hug from a dear friend. She never makes dealing with mental illness and remaining defiantly happy through the worst of it look easy, but she always makes it seem worth it.