[Books] Blame It On Bianca Del Rio Audible Review

I end up making some quirky "purchases" when my Audible membership credit comes in. As it typically means 1 new book for the credit regardless of list price, I feel free to try stuff that I would normally get on sale or something like that.

In this case I ended up with the self-narrated Blame It On Bianca Del Rio book, which nicely fits into my practice of getting biographies and memories read by the authors themselves.

But of course this isn't a memoir or biography but...a sort of Dear Abby experience? Well I suppose I should have expected something like this from the likes of Bianca Del Rio given her propensity for fielding questions and comments from people as a setup for sassy comebacks. So why not an advice book, right?

Synopsis: Blame It On Bianca Del Rio is a book by popular comedian drag queen Bianca Del Rio. It is often classified under memoirs and biographies but in terms of format it is presented as an advice book.

The setup of the book is that supposedly they gathered different questions sent in to Bianca Del Rio via social media and what have you and these were broken down into the more common questions about different things in life. And she then goes on to provide her unique brand of advice in response to these different questions.

Of course this is still Bianca Del Rio, so she the kid gloves are certainly off. She's never been known to suffer fools lightly and her advice is often falls back on one-liners, insults and other tricks of her trade as a comedian. The book is mean to be a slap of reality for some of the people who sent in questions or if anything it's just Bianca being Bianca. Strong language warning, obviously.

What I Liked: If you already like Bianca Del Rio, then you'll know how this book is going to go and you're bound to have a lot of fun. Getting the audiobook edition adds that extra dimension of enjoyment as you hear Bianca deliver her advice with her own usual snarky delivery and it makes for great entertainment indeed. It's sort of like watching one of her comedy shows but in this case you're just listening to it.

And the range of topics that the book covers is pretty nuts as she tries to live up to the cover promise of her having an opinion on everything. And certainly mouths off most generously as only she can. It's pretty well done and nicely captures her unique brand of wit.

What Could Have Been Better: Listening to this title as an audiobook can also get a little tiring as it means joke after joke after joke or punchline after punchline after punchline or really insult after insult after insult. The nature of the format can make it a little repetitive and you're mainly thankful that she puts effort into saying "XOXO" in different ways at the end of every response to a question/letter.

And this book isn't for the thin-skinned as she can be a little controversial in her statements or references. One question asks about being pansexual and her response was basically just questioning what that was suppose to mean. Yes, I know they're all meant to be jokes, but for some folks it may come across more jarring than necessary. And that's a barrier to enjoying the book freely.

TL;DR: Blame It On Bianca Del Rio is what happens when you sit an insult comic drag queen down to make her write a book. It's the sort of controversial irreverence that is bound to delight her fans but may not immediately make sense to everyone else who happens to read the book. And thus the audiobook gets 3.5 instances of Bianca raising her voice out of a possible 5.