Rating: 3.5 Stars

Format: Audiobook (Audible)

Like many people in my relative age range, I grew up watching Josh Peck perform first on The Amanda Show and then on Drake & Josh. Then, I spent the intervening years occasionally wondering what he was up to but not thinking about him much, until I started seeing him again on shows like How I Met Your Father and the iCarly reboot. 

My main reaction to this was that my childhood felt all confused watching Hillary Duff and Josh Peck kiss, if I’m honest. All that is to say, when I saw that Peck had written a memoir, I was curious to hear what he’d been up to in those years between Drake & Josh and his reappearance on my TV screen.

Turns out, the answer is he was up to a lot of things. Happy People Are Annoying had a lot of ground to cover.

(Full disclosure: This post uses Amazon affiliate links because I couldn’t find this one on Bookshop.org).

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When you grab a celebrity memoir, there’s two ways it tends to go: either it’s some anecdotes and a few drops of spilled tea from their career without much depth, or they surprise you and knock your socks off with their writing chops. Or at least, that’s been my experience. 

Josh Peck’s memoir fell into the latter category. This is not a fluffy memoir that details his days as a Nickolodeon star, but rather a deep and vulnerable exploration of what led him to become addicted to drugs and alcohol. He details his struggles with his career and his identity, as well as the time he spent pivoting to Vine and YouTube when acting wasn’t working out for him. I somehow missed this part of his career thanks to never getting into Vine and having aged out of my YouTube obsession before he joined the platform. 

Peck has led an interesting life and he writes about it with a wry humor and thoughtful reflection that I appreciated. This book satisfied my curiousity about why he spent so many years out of the limelight while still being a memoir with a bit more to say about life, the universe, and everything. 

After reading it, I’m surprised there’s been so little buzz around a pretty good book from an actor who is well known to so many millenials. So here I am saying that Happy People are Annoying is worth a read, and that I recommend the audio as performed by the author. I recommend it to fans of celebrity memoirs, of stories about mental health and career challenges, and of course, anyone who wants to know what Josh Peck has been up to.