“The tension between the sacred and the secular permeates every page of this heartfelt memoir. . . . Poignantly describe[s] the grace and beauty of ordinary moments.” - Publishers Weekly
“[A] thoughtful yet adventure-filled account of growing up religious and then . . . making her way in the Big Apple’s media/writing scene. . . . Go check out the blurb [Jeff Sharlet] ended up sending her, practically anointing her the voice of a generation. Are we surprised? No.” - Ben Dickinson, Elle.com
“That Bauer’s story has a happy ending—she is, by any standard, a gifted and accomplished writer—is a testament, ultimately, to the power of talent. Bauer evolves, of course, in the memoir—but it’s not the reflexive abandonment of a narrow girlhood that we’ve become used to. And no one who reads Bauer’s book can doubt that it’s variety of experience and, yes, worldview that makes for true vibrancy in writing as in life.” - Jezebel
“Not That Kind of Girl is a vigorously observed book about sex, God, and reading, by a tremendously talented writer who knows that none of those words—‘sex,’ ‘God,’ or ‘reading’—leads to the kind of tidy conclusions that have come to make memoir a disreputable genre. Carlene Bauer’s autobiography—one of the most truthful, intelligent, and engrossing I’ve read in years—redeems the form. This Christ-haunted confession of a ‘good girl’ who goes to New York may become a generation’s definitive account of books and the city.” - Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Family
“There are many memoirs that take sex seriously, many that take religion seriously, and still others that take rock music seriously. Not that Kind of Girl is about all three, and it’s a true original.” - Mark Oppenheimer, author of Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America
“Conjuring up the journey of transformation that all of us undergo when we strip off the roles our parents chose for us in favor of improvised intellectual wardrobes scavenged from found ideas, favorite books, flea markets, and cool friends’ closets. . . . [Bauer] renders the journey soulful and suspenseful, a pilgrim’s progress through modern-day bohemia.” - Walter Kirn, Elle
“An elegant, jazzy stylist, puckish without being flip, {Bauer) makes most other memoirists -- of either gender -- seem shallow and gabby by comparison.” - L Magazine