Sucker Punch: Essays

by Scaachi Koul

The long-awaited follow-up from one of the most original and hilarious voices writing today.

Scaachi Koul’s first book was a collection of raw, perceptive, and hilarious essays reckoning with the issues of race, body image, love, friendship, and growing up the daughter of immigrants. When the time came to start writing her next book, Scaachi assumed she’d be updating her story with essays about her elaborate four-day wedding, settling down to domestic bliss, and continuing her never-ending arguments with her parents. Instead, the Covid pandemic hit, the world went into lockdown, Scaachi’s marriage fell apart, she lost her job, and her mother was diagnosed with cancer.

Sucker Punch is about what happens when the life you thought you’d be living radically changes course, everything you thought you knew about the world and yourself has tilted on its axis, and you have to start forging a new path forward. Scaachi employs her signature humor and fierce intelligence to interrogate her previous belief that fighting is the most effective tool for progress. She examines the fights she’s had—with her parents, her ex-husband, her friends, online strangers, and herself—all in an attempt to understand when a fight is worth having, and when it's better to walk away.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Audiobook, Canada, Biography, Biography Memoir

272 pages, Hardcover

First published March 4, 2025

About the author

Scaachi Koul is a culture writer at BuzzFeed Canada. She is the author of a book of essays One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter. Koul attended the journalism school at Ryerson University.

Before BuzzFeed, Scaachi worked at Penguin Random House Canada, the acquiring publisher of 'One Day'. Before that she was an intern at Maclean's Magazine and The Huffington Post. Her journalism has appeared in Flare, The Huffington Post (Canada), The Thought Catalog, The Guardian, The New Yorker, The Globe and Mail, and other sites.

Reviews

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

as divorce books go this one was pretty great. and good god anne lamott really does have dreadlocks, what the fuck

[Dona's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished Reading

Pre-Read Notes:

I was drawn to this one because of that bright green cover with the brass knuckles with a wedding ring on the appropriate finger hold. Anyone who's been married knows that sometimes a happy marriage turns into a metaphorical brawl, often over very little. The cover images also suggest a dark humor I think I'll appreciate. Looking forward to this one!

Final Review

[...M]arriage has always felt high stakes, like if you get it wrong, the universe could stop still on its axis. p12

Review and recommendations

I have spent so much of my own life trying to assess whether I have any power or not. I never get closer to an answer.p108

Reading Notes

Favorite Essays:
1. "A Comprehensive List of Everything My Dad Has Called Bergdorf Goodman"
2. "Parvati Stands in Flames"

A Few Words about the Essays:
1. "Parvati Stands in Flames" - An essay about a family defined by trauma bonds. I related to this essay in its tone and topic. It's tough to write about your messed up family whom you love to bits.
2. "A Close Read" - A reckoning with the pandemic and the perpetrators of her own Me-Too moments.
3. "Chocolate, Lime Juice, Ice Cream" - Here are some things I would rather do in public than write about my body... : Punch my cat in the face , eat a leech, have sex with an impolite wolf, allow someone to watch me try to pluck an ingrown hair from the most tender part of my groin, p53
4. "Two Stars" - A piece on the vulnerability of getting divorced in public life.
5. "Lolita, Later" - An interesting take on Lolita and real-life age-gap romances.
6. "Auspicious" - I’m not alone unless my mother leaves me alone . I’m not alone until I am alone for good. p151
7. "Kali Starts a Fire" - What I wanted was space—sometimes literally. I wanted it to be possible for me to carefully and thoughtfully build a rocket for one, outfitted with the most powerful engine known to humanity, big enough just for my body and maybe a paperback or two, a few packs of Dramamine, and maybe my good pair of glasses. p159
8. "A Comprehensive List of Everything My Dad Has Called Bergdorf Goodman" - This one is cute and possibly my favorite in the collection.

Rating: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 /5 fires to start and end this collection!
Recommend? yes
Finished: Mar 8 '25
Format: accessible digital arc, NetGalley
Read this book if you like:
📓 nonfiction
💍 personal essays
❤️‍🩹 Marriage gone bad
🙃 Sarcastic humor

Thank you to the author Scaachi Koul, publishers St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for an accessible advance digital copy of SUCKER PUNCH. I found an accessible digital copy on Libby. All views are mine.
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[Jillian B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tender, raw, and hilarious, this collection of essays focuses on the author’s life in the midst and aftermath of a divorce. Told in her distinctive voice, many of the essays are snarky and witty, while others are so insightful and moving that they hit like…well, a sucker punch.

I absolutely devoured this book, and I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys literary non-fiction, especially millennial women.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A personal collection of essays in which Canadian writer Scacchi Koul shares her experiences with divorce, rape, body image, disordered eating, life during the pandemic and more. This was good on audio narrated by the author herself but I'm not sure I liked it quite as much as her first book. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

[Nev · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Scaachi Koul’s first book, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, when I read it back in 2017. So I was excited to see that she had another collection of essays coming out. She is again tackling topics like romantic relationships, family, race, and body image. It’s interesting to see how her experiences have either changed or not changed with her different stage in life after releasing the first book.

The part of this that I found the most interesting was how she was recontextualizing experiences she wrote about in her first book. Especially when it came to her experience with sexual assault. She explored all the ways she skirted around writing about it in the first book, but now in this collection was able to open up about it. I also really enjoyed reading more about her relationships with her different family members.

While there were parts of this that I appreciated and thought were very impactful, on the whole I didn’t enjoy this one as much as her first book. It’s marketed as being a collection of essays, but for me the individual chapters didn’t exactly feel like their own essays. So it kind of felt like a messy, meandering memoir instead of distinct essays.

I think that people who enjoyed One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter should definitely check this out. It’s interesting to see the evolution of her writing, life, and relationships years down the line.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an advance copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

[Kamis]

DNF at 57%

I feel like I was missing something while reading this book, or that I was reading a completely different book than everyone else. Many other reviewers wrote that this was hilarious, touching, and relatable. I found it none of those things. I've been through my share of terrible events, as we all have, and I've found the humor in them as a way to cope and work through it. There was nothing humorous about how she wrote about her situations. I'm not sure how talking about her abusive marriage (in which she was very much a part of the problem) and being friends with her assaulter in a scathing, depressing way was supposed to be funny? She constantly talks about fighting, about how her parents fight with each other, how she fights with her parents, how she wants to fight with her ex but he doesn't, how she wants to fight with everyone. This came off more as a very serious issue that she won't deal with at all. In fact, that's how pretty much everything came off as. She has many serious issues that she won't actually deal with, except for trying to fight everyone and be as horrible and hateful as possible. Not for me.

[Sam Cheng · Rating 2 out of 5]

Koul memoirs her divorce after marrying her then-husband for a year through a series of essays. She hints at how he, with fits of fury, shrinks her world to his needs and desires. In her final chapter, Kali Starts a Fire, she reveals his infidelity, a secret she obfuscates in previous chapters. Additionally, she covers topics like growing up in Canada as a child of immigrants from India, her relationship with her parents, her mother’s battle against breast cancer, journalist work, dating, friendship, bulimia, and sexual assault. In the chapter, A Close Read, Koul offers a follow-up to A Good Egg, a “30-page essay previously published about the worst thing that ever happened to [her].” In its initial form, she squeezed her encounter with “Jeff” into a palatable narrative, outlining devastation’s shape; here, she plunges the depths.

She brings wit and earnestness to her writing as she shares about her divorce as an Indian Canadian living and working in New York. Occasionally, she intertwines snippets from her divorce and the goddesses Pavarti and Kali’s stories. Although she and her nuclear family are occasionally religious, her inclusion of the Hindu Parthenon offered a unique take on marriage and divorce. She welcomes readers into her world with particular ease as she introduces her parents, whom she describes vividly, including their imperfections and love for her. Koul’s essay on body image is splendid.

I thought three things could have been improved in this 2.5-star read.

(1) The essays flow and generally build on each other, but sometimes she mentions an idea or theme, and it isn’t clear why. For example, Koul periodically brings up her childhood neighbor, Lana, and aside from the first interaction early on in the book, it always feels strange. If Lana functions as an important figure in Koul’s childhood psyche—maybe the white girl with strict parents whose marriage would eventually dissolve—it is not made clear enough to me. I understand Koul’s desire (and maybe legal ability) to share more about her decision to divorce. But the details still feel too murky for a divorce memoir.

(2) Koul never addresses why she avoids dating brown men; she comes close once when she dismissively says iykyk (I’m paraphrasing). As a person of color, she addresses her then-husband as being white, adding a problematic power dynamic to their relationship. Oddly enough, after her divorce, it seems like she continues exclusively dating white men, almost always including their height (yes, over 6 feet). This tired me. The one BIPOC she dates that gets an honorable mention is Caribbean. She appreciates not having to explain to him why she needs to take care of her aging mom battling cancer. Again, I thought this was too simplistic to draw the similarity between the middle of America and Southeast Asia. I’m not saying there isn’t overlap in the cultures’ high regard for parents that’s different from “white American’s” culture. But, in addition to the stretch (Caribbean to Indian culture), this generalization of white people in America also felt like a stretch.

(3) I hoped Koul nuanced her arguments even more. The chapter, Lolita, Later, stands out as an example. N.B. I should note upfront that I haven’t studied Lolita, so I can’t speak to the literary devices, themes, or authorial intent. In Koul’s essay, she frames Dolores Haze as wielding power within her relationship with Humbert. The similitude between Lolita’s power (with H.H.’s pedophilia) and Koul’s power (with her husband, 13 years her senior) is the men’s “infantile fixation” because they “are worse off for it”; thus, “I have power.” Suppose Koul wants to make this argument (which I don’t think works logically because gender, socio-economic status, age, and ethnicity add to the nature of power dynamics in relationships). In that case, it seems like the added layer of H.H.’s predatory seduction isn’t properly accounted for. If it is, then the logical move to make this comparison makes even less sense. From the info given, Koul’s 20 years old when she and her future husband got involved. The age gap is not lost to me, but that’s different than asserting, “No one believes me when I tell them that I had power in all of my relationships because of how much younger I was.”

I don’t expect Koul to ever read this review. If she does, I just want to say that I respect her reporting work and courage to share about divorcing her husband. I would love to buy her a drink at Civil Liberties if the opportunity ever allows.

[Clare · Rating 2 out of 5]

A cautionary tale of writing a memoir in your early 30s

[Tina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! SUCKER PUNCH: Essays by Scaachi Koul is a remarkable collection of personal essays that are written with wit and intelligence. Koul talks about growing up in the 90’s, dealing with her exes, body image, her mother’s health, the pandemic and her divorce. It’s one of my fave nonfiction reads of 2025 so far and I just love the bright cover!

Thank you to Knopf Canada for my copy and the publisher via Libro.fm for my ALC!

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scaachi Koul gives us heartfelt and hilarious essays of her life during the Covid lockdown, the ending of her marriage, losing her job and her mother being diagnosed with breast cancer.
She examines how the life she thought she would be living drastically changes in what seems like overnight.
A bright new literary voice that is real and refreshing.
I now must read her first book "One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays".

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an arc of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

[Emma S · Rating 5 out of 5]

He read her JOURNAL?! We ride at dawn.

[Kim Pet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I felt sucker punched as I was reading this one. Scaachi Koul supposed her marriage and life after Covid would resemble what it’s supposed to, but instead the lock down turned everything on its head. Used to fighting with everyone and for everything, Koul comes across as a victim, time and time again, and I could not relate to the constant whining over the outcomes of her experiences and the choices she’s made. Koul’s need to fit in and please everyone seems to explode in the most minute detail, and I wanted to yell to her “would you just be yourself?!” Heavy hitter topics of date rape, race and body image were explored, but I couldn’t relate to her internal dialogue about much of it. Maybe as a Gen Xer, this missed my generational attitude, but my patience for the majority of the book and its voice ran out early on. It seemed to me a long journey of self discovery which I was annoyed with and struggled through. I’m so disappointed, I really wanted to like this one.
*I was invited by the publisher, to read this title through NetGalley for an honest review

[Tell]

I’ve been a fan of Koul’s for years, and her piece on Trisha Paytas changed my opinion on YouTube, Trisha, and the weight of self-sought celebrity.

Billed as one of the divorce memoirs of the last few years (see below), Koul dives into her breakup with heart and humor. There’s a lot in here: Koul covers growing up in Canada, her courtship with her husband, their fights and break up, and beginning to date again.

I wanted 300 pages on the breakup, honestly. Koul is funny and smart, and so is the book. I understand how hard it is to be vulnerable for an audience, so I give her a lot of grace on the chapters where she avoids details.

One particular chapter is contemplative and rueful, sticking with the reader long after you finish the book (CW/TW:SA).

[Jill S · Rating 4 out of 5]

CanCon! 🇨🇦 I felt a great comfort reading these essays. I appreciate very much how Koul has taken the beloved Long Read of the mid-2010s and evolved with it, while also retaining the sharp voice of that internet period in a non-cringe way.

[Stacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The cover pictures brass knuckles with a diamond ring on one finger and it says a lot about what you're about to experience. Scaachi Koul is a fighter. She throws a lot of punches and she's on the receiving end, but it's the one you don't see coming that hurts the most. In this collection of deeply personal and raw essays, we get a glimpse of her life as a daughter of immigrants, body image battles, and the demise of a marriage. Infused with humor and sharp observances, it was impossible to look away.

This is a good book for those that have been through a breakup or divorce and need salve on those cuts.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an early copy

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly phenominal, heartwrenching storytelling.

I remember reading One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter and being spellbound - I still think of this title regularly because it's stuck in my brain. I related to her essays, even though we live very different lives, because her writing at the time was peak millennial. Of course I would identify with the difficulties of the late twenty-somethings who were now not young per se but definitely not the adults in the room.

Now, I feel I have grown alongside Scaachi. Her writing this time around is more mature, more soulful and gut-punchingly sad. I still can't wholly relate to her experiences but I can relate to her ennui, her recognition of the realities of life. Scaachi's writing, then and now, feels like catharsis - like validation for feeling emotions. For milennials being classified as the "everyone gets a participation trophy so no one's feelings get hurt" generation, it sure is hard to talk about emotions and how they affect us.

I want Scaachi to succeed. I validate her emotions for her, because I too have needed emotions validated. And I eagerly await her next collection of essays that will no doubt resonate with me.

[Ananya · Rating 5 out of 5]

did she look in my diary before writing this because I feel so seen

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

such a delightful balance of tenderness and humor

[K]

A little straighter than I typically read and I didn’t pay attention to the religious aspects and I fear some of the humor may seem dated BUT overall affirming and healing and some relatable parts about being an Online Person. Will def read her first book, this review sounds harsh but if I still rated books it would’ve gotten 4 stars. Thank you to NetGalley.

[Jacqueline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sucker Punch is a frank and authentic exploration of the author's journey through the end of her marriage and subsequent divorce. She doesn't shy away from exploring her own culpability in the relationship and its end while calling out her ex's abusive behaviors and their mutual destructive communication patterns. Koul shows deep insight and brave willingness to explore the many factors relating to this personal tragedy including her upbringing, societal impacts, her own choice of career to make personal issues very public in books and articles.

I felt the author was very hard on herself and found myself wincing at times; while it failed as a collection of humorous essays Sucker Punch succeeded as a raw and vulnerable picture of a strong woman wrestling through a very hard time. I found myself weighed down and emotionally spent for much of the book and feeling guilty for being disappointed I was not enjoying myself; how dare I ask the author to take all this trauma and make it funny? Except that's how it's presented, as hilarious and insightful essays. Perhaps in a couple years, after some therapy and with heavy revisions to add clarity, focus and some emotional distance, that's what these stories could be. Maybe this is what the author needed to say and how she needed to say it, even if it wasn't a fun read for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

[Jamie Canaves · Rating 5 out of 5]

“My ex-husband had good politics, but only after I’d convinced him of it.”

What do you do when your previous essay collection was about the man you married when you are now in fact divorced? You write a followup essay collection that is just as smart, funny, and observant and you reveal to the world that the dipshit (my words, and I’m being nice) had a mistress since before the wedding. Scaachi Koul was also on a fantastic episode of First Edition if you need a great podcast episode: --from 10 Notecards with Scaachi Koul

--from On Reading In March 2025 (Best Of)

[Enid Wray]

I really wanted to love this, but I struggled to connect. Something just wasn’t hitting the mark for me and I’m not entirely sure what it was that missed.

Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for granting me access to an early digital review copy.

DNF

[chats · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember liking Koul’s first book but I found this one to be kind of a slog. I loved the essay about caring for her mother and reconnecting with her brother. Some of the others just felt like she was writing in a circle to fill pages - which can happen, with grief, but I don’t particularly enjoy the experience of reading about it. (Also, from a craft perspective, some of the metaphors and turns of phrase in here made me squint. Indelible memories are a tree…growing from a dumpster…covered in dirty diapers… but sown in the soil of our mothers? What’s happening here?)

[Denise Ruttan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went into this book knowing it was a divorce narrative gearing myself up for a depressing spiral into the author's state of mind as her marriage crumbles, but I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't depressing.

The author is a memoirist who has made a living having a public persona of all her most intimate moments out there online for people to gawk at and pick apart. She thought she'd be writing a collection of essays about her hard-fought majestic four-day Indian wedding to an older white man on the eve of the pandemic, and instead the book is a tender and wholehearted examination of love and all the ways it functions in our lives or falls apart. I was surprised that this book was more about presence than absence of love.

The author takes an unflinching look at her life and decisions, ranging from her striking up an adult friendship with her college rapist boyfriend to the way her boisterous family fights to show their love and how that taught her to be loud and argumentative. Because she now regretted how much she held back to protect his feelings in her first essay about her college boyfriend, I couldn't help but wonder if even as she detailed all her raw earnesty whether she was holding back now to protect people. This felt very honest and full-dimensional but I always wonder this with influencers, how much of what they share is real and what they hold back to protect their privacy or to craft the image and brand they want to project.

I liked how she ruthlessly examined that aspect of her life as well and the parasocial relationships that now demanded an explanation for her divorce. I admit I too have felt entitled to explanations from people I only know online when they constantly brag about how happy of a couple they are online and post happy couple pictures and then it just ends. This book is that explanation. It felt like a journalist reporting on a human interest portrait but it became a deep dive into her own life and emotions.

I appreciated how she didn't hold back in criticizing her own actions and I really felt her family's love for her and her love for them bleed from the page. But she showed their love in all its ugly complications.

Most of all I was surprised at just how tender and earnest this collection was. I left it feeling hopeful and that there are different paths to happiness despite cultural expectations.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Michelle Leung · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a fan of Scaachi’s work on buzzfeed and had really enjoyed reading her first book. Sucker Punch is a collection of essays that mainly center around her divorce from her husband 13 years her senior. In it, she also explores topics any child of immigrants is intimately familiar with - family trauma and cultural identity. Scaachi also brings in elements of Hindu heritage and mythology, which I appreciated learning about. While some of the topics are heavy, like her battle with disordered eating, and a past sexual assault - it’s also bookended with chronicles of her dating life and funny message exchanges with her father.

[Paige · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent new essay collection from Koul, most well known for having written for Buzzfeed for quite some time (remember how BuzzFeed used to employ a few good, real writers?). She's also the author of One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, which I remember greatly enjoying in 2017.

And finally we have a follow-up! This is basically a divorce memoir in essays, and while I would normally find that concept very dull, I love Koul's sharp, funny voice. I highly recommend the audiobook because as I repeat: she is so, so funny.

[Kaylie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new favorite divorce memoir. I loved Koul's voice, emotional precision, layered honesty, and humor so much that I'm torn as to whether I want to read her first one (which she describes as the unwittingly skewed love story preceding the divorce). I think I'll have to. This was just right for me.

[Janet Hutchinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Koul's essays explore the difference between dreams and realities. A marriage breakdown, her mother diagnosed with cancer - all contrasted from what she thought would be an ideal marriage and , although she knew her relationship with her mother was challenging, the marriage would mend all that. I like Koul's writing - her honesty, and her willingness to bare all (or all that she felt needed to be bared) is beautifully, brutally open.

[Ann Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would read anything Scaachi Koul writes, so I actually did scream when I got the galley of her reading her new book. Sucker Punch was hilarious, brutally honest, sad and moving and then hilarious again. Painful and tender, thoughtful and funny funny funny in Scaachi’s perfect way.

Thank you to #netgalley and #macmillanaudio for the advanced copy.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sucker Punch: Essays by Scaachi Koul
✅ audiobook #gifted to me through @librofm’s influencer program (best program ever btw, highly recommend!)

I’m a big fan of Scaachi Koul’s writing and have been following her for years through various media outlets and on Twitter—I’ve always enjoyed the way she tackles a story or issue, her brand of humour always speaks to me and her stories about her parents are particularly funny.

In this, her second collection of essays, we see a different side to her. Where she used to strike me as eagerly combative and bold, here she seems drained of fight, a little defeated, seemingly as lost as the rest of us who once felt like we could take on anything, fight the good fight, but got punched down by the never ending dumpster fire that has been our timeline since the pandemic. Only Koul’s new marriage also fell apart, her mom got cancer and journalism died so… she wins I guess!

The majority of this book is focussed on her divorce, the way she used to see her partner and relationship, and how/why it ended but mostly through the way they fought, over what, and what fighting used to mean for her. There’s a lot of growth and self-reflection here and also a sad amount of “should have known” which I feel like strikes all of us who date older men in our early twenties… I think I’ve seen this film before and I didn’t like the ending…

Anywho! I enjoyed this, excellent read by the author, but the vibes were definitely bleaker than I was hoping for.