The Half of It: A Memoir

A memoir from singer-songwriter Madison Beer, chronicling the past decade of her life spent in the spotlight-the ups, the downs, and the in-betweens that you won't see on social media.

Discovered at twelve years old, Madison Beer was one of the first artists to have her entire life documented online. Over the past decade, she has navigated the spotlight as a child, through her teenage years, and now as a young woman in her twenties.

In The Half of It, Madison pulls back the curtain to show the behind-the-scenes of her journey, from reckoning with mass hate online and the time her private pictures were leaked, to battling suicidal thoughts while making her highly acclaimed debut album, Life Support, and her recovery since then. This memoir is an honest and unflinching account of self-love, mental health, and advocacy from one of the fastest-rising musical voices and most influential social media presences of her generation. It hammers home the point, more striking and urgent than ever, that no matter how close the internet may make us feel to people, we truly don't know the half of it.

Readers Top Reviews

Anonymous

I have to say that I am a fan of Madison Beer, I think nothing but highly of her. But I am going to rate this as an independent entity. Let me begin with giving her credit to where it is due, the context of this book itself and what she had to go through at such a young age is really inspiring and I credit her for her strength and healing. It is a shame that someone so young has to go through a lifetime worth of struggles, but life really just is unfair sometimes. I would have loved if this would have come out a few more years down the line, I would have loved to see how much more she grows within a few years. But can't knock her for releasing this at perhaps the height of her career! In my opinion, I thought she was trying to accentuate how harmful the negative comments on social media are, throughout the entire book. There is no doubt that an abundance of negative comments is definitely hard to stomach, I am in no way discrediting that aspect of it - at all. But it really did feel like she was beating a dead horse, the way how in every chapter it was somehow mentioned and how her mindset or actions had been because of these comments. I think it put an overall negative cast onto the vibe of the book, I thought this book could have used a positive cast to a such a negative context. I thought it would perhaps be more tasteful if she had been more suggestive about it in the following chapters, especially considering how many times she did go in depth with this concept and her feelings about it already. I also thought the journal prompt pages were unexpected and could have been prefaced in order for them to not feel as random. I also thought that her chapter about her best friend that helped her create the memoir was a bit random, I thought that it could have done well in the preface as well. Beyond that, I thought that the memoir wasn't particularly written well or narrated well, either. I don't think I need to divulge too much into the writing itself, as that is pretty straight forward. But the narrating was a bit animated, I think it could have been toned down just a touch and it would have been perfect. I was overall not impressed, but will always be a fan of Madison.

KristaKristaSteph

Very thoughtful of Madison to share her story and an overall reminder to be kind…we all as individuals go through ups and downs.