Going Overboard: The Misadventures of a Military Wife Review

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(More customer reviews)A ghastly book by the sadly misnamed Sarah Smiley. I have a weakness for domestic memoirs (Jean Kerr, Shirley Jackson, Erma Bombeck) and I am, myself, a military wife, so I was excited to find this book and fully expected to enjoy it.
I hated it. A lot. With the exception of books about serial killers, I don't believe I've ever read a book with a protagonist I liked less. 260 pages of whining. No empathy for anyone: poor Sarah always has it worse. Her mother (an admiral's wife) comments that deployments used to be worse back in the days before email. No, says Sarah, email is worse because there is more disappointed anticipation. ?!?
A friend suffers a miscarriage and Sarah has to be literally shamed into going to help her (Sarah doesn't like blood, you see). Nowhere in the remainder of the book is there an inkling of sympathy for this woman (also a military wife) who has had three miscarriages, the last one while her husband was deployed. It's all about Sarah (who has to babysit for the woman's older child).
Another friend's husband is sent home from the deployment and their family must relocate to California (from Florida) in a month. The reasons for this are not specified, but I can tell you that an officer isn't usually sent home early from a deployment for good behavior. Sarah's response? First, jealousy that her friend's husband is coming home; second, discontent that she (Sarah) will be losing her friend!
The worst, though, is her treatment of her husband, whom she is mad at throughout the entire book. To use one example only: Sarah's husband sends her an email -- one that would have broken my heart had my husband sent it to me -- in which he writes sadly that he will miss seeing their new baby's first smile, just as he missed seeing their older son's. Sarah's response to this? To be angry because that was the only email he sent her that day.
I finished the book only because I was hoping she would grow up! Nope, though. She was just as self-absorbed and whiney on the last page as she had been on the first. I came to Amazon and read the reviews and found several people who said something like "I don't know anything about the military, but now I have an understanding of what military wives go through." I hate the idea that people will read this tripe and think it is in any way representative of me, or of any of the fine military spouses I have known!
And this was a memoir! I can't imagine writing a book in which I acted like a spoiled brat from page 1 to page 260 and allowing it to be published with my picture on the front! Of course, Sarah doesn't think she is a spoiled brat -- oh no! Sarah pees champagne and poops gold bricks and is the white-hot center of the universe...
Once I finished it I threw the thing in the garbage. Yep, the garbage. Usually I donate books I don't want anymore to the library, but that didn't seem final enough in this case. So it's on its way to the York County Waste Treatment Facility right now. And I'm not a bit sorry!


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A former Navy brat and present-day Navy wife, Sarah Smiley knows better than anyone that weddings and funerals-even childbirth!-take a backseat to Uncle Sam. And it seems that every time the young, nationally syndicated columnist gets comfortable with her routine, her husband is sent away for an unexpected deployment. What follows is a true test of strength and wit that even Sarah's nit-picking mother-in-law couldn't have prepared her for. From raccoons in the attic to getting locked out of the house in cowgirl pajamas to developing a crush on her handsome doctor, Sarah learns that growing up means taking a leap-and sometimes going a little overboard. In this memoir, she exposes it all with candor, heart, and a whole lot of laughs.

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