YMMV / Where Am I Now? True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame

• Funny Moments:
  • The Junior Anti-Sex League - all of it. Mara hearing about sex and counting up her brothers and sisters, realising with horror that their parents had to have had sex "at least five times."
  • The Big Damn Kiss between her and Gavin gets hilarious when passersby complain about the PDA. Mara describes wanting to yell back at them, but not letting her Skewed Priorities interrupt the kiss.
  • Thank You Ten sounds like a hilarious play, where Mara describes the entire class giggling at the stage directions.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The National Enchoirer chapter - dealing with Mara's complicated friendship towards an Alpha Bitch called Olivia - takes on new light after Mara came out as bisexual.
  • The Junior Anti-Sex League has a throwaway comment that a girl asked Mara to marry her as a child once and she said yes so as not to hurt her feelings.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Mara discovering that Kissing Doorknobs was written by the mother of Kira Spencer Hesser, who played Hortensia in Matilda. She describes writing an email to both of them explaining how it helped her diagnosis. Kira wrote back saying the two were moved to tears over it.
  • After she was diagnosed with OCD, Mara claims her friends all went out to buy copies of Kissing Doorknobs, so they could better understand her condition.
  • Dear Matilda - Mara running into a woman whose deceased daughter loved the book and film, and getting thanked for her portrayal. The woman and her husband buy the whole reception drinks (it happens at her brother's wedding).
  • Mara going to see Matilda: The Musical and going up to introduce herself to the cast, who immediately happily say they know who she is.
• Jerkass Woobie: Mara's first boyfriend Zack - a Jerkass who treats her terribly, yet has a dysfunctional relationship with his family and at one point ends up being taken advantage of by a twenty-seven-year-old.
• Nightmare Fuel: Mara recounting her discovery of porn of herself online. At first she worries she was somehow drugged and kidnapped. When she discredits that theory, she still worries about the anonymous girl "whose body stood in for mine".
• Squick: Mara describes being still a child and getting a script for a make-out scene on Picket Fences - pointing out how adults loved bringing kids into "that grown-up world". Understandably she didn't take the part.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Elementary Existentialism - Mara realising that the tooth fairy isn't real after her mother dies.
  • Goddess Oracle - Suzie begging Mara to take a picture with herself and Anna right before she starts cancer treatment, so they can have a photo together while she still has all her hair.
  • Remembering Robin - all of it, from Mara getting the news while out with friends to her Parting-Words Regret with him.
  • National Enchoirer - Mara having a Heel Realization when she meets a sweet girl called Ashley who gets bullied by everyone else. It's said that Ashley was later taken out of school because of anorexia.
  • I Think I'm Alone Now - the slow deterioration of Mara and Zack's relationship. It ends with a mean-spirited Take That! to Mara on an online quiz - prompting her to say "fuck you, Zack" and never seeing him again.
• Unconventional Learning Experience: Patterns is a good way to learn about what it's like suffering from OCD. Naturally as Mara herself learned about it from reading Kissing Doorknobs, and also wrote a Cracked article debunking some myths on the condition - it's likely this was deliberate.