A hilarious, heartfelt, and refreshingly honest memoir and New York Times bestseller by the beloved comedic actress known for her jobs on Freaks and Geeks, Dawson’s Creek, and Cougar Town who is becoming “the breakout celebrity of Instagram tales…Imagine I Love Lucy blended with a modern way of life master” (The New Yorker).

There’s no stopping Busy Philipps. From the time she was two and “aced out in her nudes” to explore a nearby (as her mom famously explained her young child jailbreak), Busy about This Will Only Hurt a Little has always been headstrong, defiant, and determined not to miss out on all of the fun. These characteristics led her to leave Scottsdale, Arizona, at age nineteen to pursue her enthusiasm for acting in Hollywood. But very much like her painful and painfully funny teenage years, running after her dreams wasn’t generally easy and occasionally hurt greater than a little.

In a memoir “that often reads just like a Real World confessional or an open up diary” (Kirkus Reviews), Busy starts up about chafing against a sexist program rife with on-set bullying and body system shaming, being there when friends face shattering loss, long lasting devastating personal and professional betrayals from those she loved best, and fighting postpartum anxiety as well as the challenges of motherhood.

But Busy also brings to the page her sly love of life and the unshakeable feeling that disappointment shouldn’t stand in her way—even though she’s knocked down both figuratively and literally (from a knee damage at her seventh-grade dance to a violent encounter over the group of Freaks and Geeks). The rough patches in her existence are tempered by occasions of hilarity and joy: leveraging a perfect impression of Cher from Clueless into her 1st paid performing gig, helping reinvent a genre with cult classic Freaks and Geeks, becoming fast friends with Dawson’s Creek castmate Michelle Williams, staging her personal surprise wedding, conquering natural childbirth with the help of a Mad Guys–themed hallucination, and undoubtedly, how her Instagram tales became “the most addictive point on the web right today” (Cosmopolitan).

Busy is the rare entertainer whose impressive arsenal of skills as an celebrity is equally matched by her storytelling capability, love of life, and clear observations about life, love, and motherhood—“if you think you know Busy from her Instagram tales, you don’t know the half of it” (Jenni Konner). Her conversational writing reminds us what we should like about her on displays large and small. From “candid tales of celebrity life, mom existence, and general Busy-ness” (W Journal), This Will Only Hurt just a little “is everything we’ve been dying to listen to about” (Bustle).