May 15, 2017
For Osbourne (Fierce), there are no secrets to living one’s life other than being comfortable with oneself and, perhaps more importantly, being a badass when warranted. Osbourne, eager to both come out from under her famous parents’ shadows (her father is Ozzy Osbourne) and celebrate her nontraditional upbringing, structures this mostly successful and often powerful memoir in the form of letters to her parents, her inner filter (or lack thereof), and drug addictions. Fans wondering what it was like to grow up the daughter of heavy metal royalty should look elsewhere for sordid stories. This isn’t a tell-all. Osbourne is candid about her father’s addictions and the fact that she loves him in spite of it, and her terror over possibly losing her mother, Sharon, to cancer is palpable. Her trademark humor and coarse language are always in evidence, even when she’s discussing the bleakest of subjects, and this approach transforms what could have been just another celebrity story into something much more triumphant. Osbourne isn’t perfect and she isn’t trying to be; instead, she’s honest about her faults and victories, something much more difficult to pull off.