FEBRUARY 2023 - AudioFile
Author and narrator Tamera Mowry-Housley brings stories of her acting career to audiobook listeners. Best known for her role as Tamera Campbell on the ABC/WB sitcom "Sister, Sister," she recounts her professional achievements and failures on TV, the big screen, and even the stage. Mowry-Housley gives an overly dramatic performance of her life's ups and downs, using bombastic tones while punctuating sentences with sarcasm and dry wit and exclamation marks. Her frequent shifts in pitch and accent within sentences make her performance choppy. Most noticeable, her folksy narration is marred by sloppy pronunciation of multisyllabic words. Nonetheless, listeners will enjoy her "Tamera-isms"--lessons learned and wisdom to live by that are sprinkled throughout her memoir. M.B.K. 2023 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
For Mowry's fans old and new, this is a treat.”—Booklist
“An upbeat memoir peppered with nuggets of advice… Mowry-Housley opines on sex, race (she is biracial), and family. She shares a moving homage to a beloved 18-year-old niece killed in a mass shooting, and she reflects on being a working mother and reveals the dark side of her time working on The Real. . . . Self-care, she underscores, is crucial for happiness. Heartfelt hints for living a good life.”—Kirkus
"Tamera’s book is funny, smart, and incredibly inspiring! As a fellow childhood star, I have always admired Tamera. I was excited to learn so much more about her and family, and every page made me smile." —Mario Lopez
FEBRUARY 2023 - AudioFile
Author and narrator Tamera Mowry-Housley brings stories of her acting career to audiobook listeners. Best known for her role as Tamera Campbell on the ABC/WB sitcom "Sister, Sister," she recounts her professional achievements and failures on TV, the big screen, and even the stage. Mowry-Housley gives an overly dramatic performance of her life's ups and downs, using bombastic tones while punctuating sentences with sarcasm and dry wit and exclamation marks. Her frequent shifts in pitch and accent within sentences make her performance choppy. Most noticeable, her folksy narration is marred by sloppy pronunciation of multisyllabic words. Nonetheless, listeners will enjoy her "Tamera-isms"--lessons learned and wisdom to live by that are sprinkled throughout her memoir. M.B.K. 2023 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2022-08-12
A TV star shares her wisdom.
Mowry-Housley (b. 1978), a former co-host of the Fox talk show The Real, offers an upbeat memoir peppered with nuggets of advice that she calls Tameraisms. Describing herself as “a little Black girl who had big dreams and grand ambitions,” she recounts many times that she “doubted herself, almost quit, shed tears, cried a ton, but learned how to laugh some more through it all.” Born in Germany, where her parents were stationed in the Army, she moved to Hawaii when she was 3 and then to central Texas, where she and her identical twin sister conjured up a routine that they performed at county fairs and in shopping malls. Seeing potential in her children’s talents, her mother moved them to Los Angeles. After failed auditions, they finally broke into TV: Mowry-Housley’s brother was cast in Full House and she and her twin in the sitcom Sister, Sister. One Tameraism: “It’s okay to fail as long as you fail up.” With TV work and school, she had no time for boyfriends, resulting in “dashed fantasies, unreasonable expectations, and wasted lip gloss” when she finally started to date. In matters of love, and in her career, she learned quickly that “there is no express train to success.” Mowry-Housley opines on sex, race (she is biracial), and family. She shares a moving homage to a beloved 18-year-old niece killed in a mass shooting, and she reflects on being a working mother and reveals the dark side of her time working on The Real. Although she loved her co-hosts, dealing with cruel public scrutiny played out on social media made it “one of the unhappiest times of my life. I suffered horrible anxiety, I’d throw up in my dressing room, I drank way too much.” Self-care, she underscores, is crucial for happiness. Though she offers little groundbreaking insight, the author comes across as genuine.
Heartfelt hints for living a good life.
