Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer

In this winning debut memoir, actor and influencer Mulvaney recounts coming out as trans and navigating the right-wing backlash to her appearance in a 2023 ad campaign for Bud Light. Writing in the easygoing style of a private journal, Mulvaney discusses the pleasures and pitfalls of sharing one’s life online, the lessons she’s learned from weathering public controversy, and the details of what she calls “Beergate.” Chapters alternate between traditional memoir and chatty letters printed on faux stationery, succeeding in Mulvaney’s stated goal of marrying girlishness with gravity. Most affecting are the moments of raw emotion: the author writes of wanting to “cry tears of relief” after receiving a flood of positive comments on her first TikTok about her gender transition in 2022, and of feeling like “a sacrificial lamb” during the Bud Light debacle (“TikTok fattened me up. Big corporate bought me. The media devoured me”). She’s also quite funny, as when she describes an appointment at a laser hair removal clinic decorated with Christian memorabilia as “an hour and a half of zapping my pubes in God’s house.” It adds up to a charming testament to the messy business of getting to know oneself. Illus. Agent: Gabby Fetters, CAA. (Mar.)