This was eye opening. I didn't realize half pint had such a troubled past. I'm not sure she is a great story teller but if you grew up watching Little House and knew about her and Rob Lowe it was interesting. Rob Lowe's autobiography was great and he's a great storyteller but he didn't go into as much detail or as Melissa. This book filled in those gaps. She did drop a lot of names and didn't seem to hold much back when talking about those names. Good for her for being real. FYI she's a bit of a potty mouth. What would ma say?! ( )

Read half, skimmed some - quit!!

Name-dropping and narcissism... That's what I got from this. ( )

I was a little bit disappointed in this book. I did find it interesting that she talks A LOT about Rob Lowe and in his book, he doesn't mention Melissa very often. I thought his book was a lot kinder on the subject.

I LOVED Little House when I was young - LOVED it! At least until Laura got older, then I didn't like the way she was portrayed on the show. When I saw this book was out, I really wanted to read it. I don't know what I was expecting. I know her life wasn't all sunlight, roses, and wagon wheels but somehow, I just didn't get into the spirit of this memoir.

I didn't mind the name dropping, though. I mean, that's part of the reason I read the book! ( )

"Little House on the Prairie" and Melissa Gilbert always bring a childhood friend named Sharon to mind. She liked Melissa so much that she wrote to her during a classroom exercise on letter writing--and she got a signed photo back. Oddly, though, I never thought of Melissa Gilbert as a redhead, so when she would refer to herself that way, it was a bit confusing. I knew the story about her brother Jonathan being on "Little House" and that being his only acting gig; I didn't know he'd cut himself off from their family at some point--that's sad.

The Good: The beginning of the book is written in an engaging style (the last few chapters about SAG etc. not so much so). Melissa is very honest about her struggles and her faults. She balances the good things with the bad things that have happened in her life. She also now seems to realize that much of her personal life centered around her being adopted as a child (and feeling as if she needed to earn love or that she could be returned if she wasn't perfect) and around not being able to talk about her feelings during her childhood (which led to stuffing her feelings). She does seem committed to her relationship with Bruce Boxleitner and working through the issues they have--at least as of the time of the writing of this book.

The Bad: Her romantic relationships seem to be very repetitive--just change the name of the guy (Rob Lowe, Bo Brinkman, Bruce Boxleitner). She uses a lot of profanity (something you wouldn't expect based on her prairie image). There's a lot of name dropping. The chronology is sometimes a bit meandering. ( )