It's Messy

Amanda de Cadenet gathers a set of personal essays in which she passes along the lessons she has picked up as a businesswoman, a friend, a wife and a mother. Her larger aim is to spark conversations that help women feel seen, heard and understood. Her multimedia project The Conversation has given her a platform for frank interviews with prominent women, among them Hillary Clinton and Lady Gaga, that probe what it means to be a woman.

Here she turns the same candid approach toward her own life. She describes growing up in the public eye as a child, a high-profile marriage that later ended in divorce, becoming a mother as a teenager, and the sexism that nearly derailed her career before it had properly begun. The book mixes setbacks with successes and draws out what each experience taught her. Throughout, she writes as a feminist working close to the center of celebrity culture, offering a viewpoint that is her own.

Edgy, irreverent and candid, the book takes up the questions and pressures that women face today.