Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography by Neil Patrick Harris

The Emmy Award-winning star of How I Met Your Mother shares his experiences as a child star, Broadway performer and father in an over-the-top, humorous account creatively designed in the style of the popular interactive adventure series.

I completely hated the choose-your-own-adventure feature of this book (I know, this instantly makes me a horrible person), but I adore the biography. It definitely highlights the positive while navigating through NPHs personal and professional life. I love the insight.

I received this book from BloggingForBooks in exchange for an honest review.

First, I just want to explain this book. It is the story of Neil Patrick Harris's life. However it is a twist on the typical autobiography. When you get to the end of the chapter, there is a footnote that gives you between 1 and 3 choices of where you can take the story next. This book is not meant to be read cover to cover. Rather it is meant to be read multiple times, choosing different stories to tell.

This book was so unique and I loved it. I don't tend to read non-fiction, let alone autobiographies, but this book was just as entertaining as what I typically read. Between choosing how the story would end, plus the second person POV, it was great. I also loved the “guest” writers like Kelly Rippa and Barney Stinson. I loved how it was written as if you were experiencing Neil Patrick Harris's life. I decided for this first time reading that I would go with always choosing the happier option or most entertaining one.

Some of the endings throughout the book are hilarious. Especially the Joss Whedon one! This book was full of fun, quirky lines that had me giggling to myself and getting weird looks. But it was worth it. This was a fun light read that I really enjoyed diving into. Neil Patrick Harris's humor and shows are great and this book really showcased that. I also really loved the drawings and pictures throughout the book.

I think this is one of those books that you have to have the physical book for. Between the pictures and the drawings, and even the little footnotes, I don't think an ebook format would work well. Even the idea of flipping through the book following into the next story would not translate well in a ebook format.

On a side note, the back blurb is great. It just added to how much I enjoyed this book!

The choose-your-own-adventure format is fun at first, but it gets old pretty quickly. I just read the book like normal, and it made perfect sense to me.

NPH seems like a really genuine, nice guy. He's a surprisingly good writer, funny and engaging. There aren't many shocking revelations (any, now that I think about it) or juicy bits of gossip (a little, not much) in this book, it's just a straightforward and undeniably charming look at a performer that also happens to seem like a pretty cool person.