I was so surprised at how well written and entertaining this book was, I felt compelled to leave a review. It is an incredible true story, one you wouldn't say was possible if it was a made-up drama. But it is the way it is put together and delivered in a compelling, stylistic way that makes it far more satisfying and enjoyable than most other books. I would recommend this to anyone - I finished it in literally three sittings!

It’s true that the older you get and the more people you meet, the more you realise that everyone has had some level of dysfunction in their lives, more often than not around their family unit. You learn that your family is strange and so are other people’s, and that’s okay because we’d like to live in a world where we respect each other’s paths and histories without judgement. What makes each case different is the level of dysfunction, the lottery of life offering some dreamy childhoods and others hell on earth. Breaking Dad is different from most because of the sheer swing of functionality to chaos. Most people are able to somewhat come away from family dysfunction as they move out and develop their own lives, maybe creating their own family redefined as they have children. By your early twenties you pretty much assume that your childhood was your childhood and your parents will continue in this way as you get older. James had a fairly calm childhood, his dad a coin dealer and his parents bringing him up with Jewish values and to do well at school and enter university. However, at the beginning of the book, his dad comes out as gay and from there his life takes a massive swing round a u-turn for a few years until we learn of his dads arrest for drug dealing the largest amount of methamphetamine found at the time. The fun of this book is the opportunity to go along this crazy journey with someone you can empathise with as just a normal bloke, which helps you imagine how you would cope in similar chaos. Some of it is a bit repetitive, which I think are attempts at ongoing jokes but don’t develop enough to continue to be funny, but the story alone is well worth putting up with them for, I enjoyed this book immensely. It was a quick read for me, and certainly isn’t in any way complex to get through. The worst bit for me was the idea that anyone goes to these internet dating gurus for advice to get what to say to women, utterly cringy and unfeminist! I really hoped people just went on to laugh at them, definitely not take them seriously, as James does. This book needs no prior knowledge to read and is a worthy way to spend an afternoon.