Publishers Weekly
05/13/2019
Astrof, a sitcom writer and producer, offers a hilarious and heartfelt essay collection about, among other topics, her life as a Los Angeles “stay-at-work” mother with a demanding schedule and a fear so great of the bedtime hour that she sometimes lingers in her car until her husband has put their two children to sleep. In the sidesplitting opening essay, Astrof describes taking her seven- and nine-year-olds to a water park one weekend, while having no intention of going in the water herself. Readers will laugh out loud as she relents and dons a child’s extra-extra-large bathing suit—albeit backwards. There are heartbreaking pieces as well—one describes the frightening few weeks when, after her parents’ divorce, her unstable mother absconded with six-year-old Astrof (and, almost equally painfully, declined to abduct her brother). Nor was life with Astrof’s father easy, as he sent her to Camp Shane (aka “Camp Shame”) to lose weight. Though Astrof’s collection is often trenchant in its look at her own difficult childhood, it is also permeated with a sense of love for her kids, and is sure to resonate deeply with other parents. Kristyn Keene, ICM. (July)
The New York Post
[Astrof’s] love for her family shines through as she offers a brutally honest look at motherhood, marriage and work, rarely losing her sense of humor even while totally exasperated. . . [She] is gorgeously shameless, honest and funny, and manages to be insightful and poignant at the same time.
Jancee Dunn
"Astrof is like the hilarious, did-she-really-just-say-that friend you would kill to have at school pickup—the one that makes you explode in gleeful, scandalized laughter. She goes there—and the parenting genre is never going to be the same."
Emmy Award-nominated actress and comedian Molly Shannon
"No one makes me laugh harder than Liz Astrof. This book is the best combination of her biting humor, self-deprecating wit, and so so so much heart. It had me in tears from page one. This is a must-read memoir for anyone who has a mother or is a mother or knows a mother. Even if you can spell ‘mother.’"
Emmy Award-winning actress and television host Sara Gilbert
So funny, so relatable, just... genius.”
Shelf Awareness
"An exceptionally funny and charismatic voice... Her [Liz Astrof's] candid essays in Don't Wait Up address life's ordeals with acerbic wit, but never reduce her experiences to a laugh track... Written with a sharp pen and an open heart, Astrof's work is heartbreakingly poignant and funny as hell."
Karen Alpert
Refreshingly honest and hilarious! Astrof says out loud what so many parents are afraid to admit."
BookPage
"Don’t Wait Up is a funny, fascinating memoir of mothering that will definitely keep readers up way past their bedtime, laughing and sometimes crying page after page.
Booklist
Successful comedy writer and television producer Astrof has put together a forthright, laugh-out-loud collection of essays that lets you in on a little of what makes her shows like 2 Broke Girls or The King of Queens so much fun. . . Hilarious and, of course, as well written as any good sitcom episode, Don't Wait Up is a great read for all the moms who also aren't quite sure what to make of motherhood, and for anyone else who likes a laugh.”
Emmy Award-winning actor Jack Burditt
"I found this book utterly disturbing. Not because of Liz's unique take on motherhood, a self-proclaimed Stay-at-Work Mom, but because in a million years I will never write anything this funny. And that is unacceptable."
Justin Halpern
"Liz Astrof is wickedly funny, which is an overused term, but I feel should be solely reserved for Liz. She lets you into her life and doesn't try to sugarcoat it. It's unflinchingly honest and so effortlessly hilarious. I can't tell if Liz is insane or not, which, I swear, is a compliment."
Actress Whitney Cummings
Raw, bold, heartbreaking, ridiculously funny, and wildly inappropriate—I would expect nothing less from Liz Astrof. As someone who's seen the inside of her diaper bag—I can tell you, the stories are all true.
Booklist
Successful comedy writer and television producer Astrof has put together a forthright, laugh-out-loud collection of essays that lets you in on a little of what makes her shows like 2 Broke Girls or The King of Queens so much fun. . . Hilarious and, of course, as well written as any good sitcom episode, Don't Wait Up is a great read for all the moms who also aren't quite sure what to make of motherhood, and for anyone else who likes a laugh.
Jack Burditt
"I found this book utterly disturbing. Not because of Liz's unique take on motherhood, a self-proclaimed Stay-at-Work Mom, but because in a million years I will never write anything this funny. And that is unacceptable."
Kirkus Reviews
2019-04-14
A producer and comedy writer for 2 Broke Girls and The King of Queens, among other programs, brings her humor to the homefront with these essays about her childhood and raising her own children.
Given Astrof's extensive background in comedy, readers will expect humor throughout, and the author delivers with one punchline after another. The author clearly loves her children, but she prefers to leave the details of raising them to her husband. She shares a wide, wacky variety of stories: how she avoids returning home until she knows her kids are safely tucked in bed, how she handled a weekend at Great Wolf Lodge, an indoor water park where signs warned swimmers not to enter the pool with "active" diarrhea ("I could only speculate as to what ‘active' meant to the legal team…but mostly, I was grateful that I wouldn't have to so much as dip a toe in that shit river"), how she reacted when her stash of candy dissolved while on vacation in Mexico; why she is convinced she'll be murdered while on a work-related weekend with fellow writers; why a "fun" trip to the mall with her kids is anything but; and how an idyllic vacation in Hawaii turned into a fiasco thanks to one errant text message. Underneath the comedy, however, are details about the author's difficult childhood living with verbally abusive parents who fought over her custody. She also grew up with weight and self-esteem issues and still has trouble with both concerns as an adult. The juxtaposition between the absurdity and the reality of Astrof's life creates a mostly effective balance, which pushes this book beyond the slapstick visible at the surface and into a more reflective realm.
Droll wit and profundity swirl together in a revealing memoir from a successful comedy writer.
