Happy birthday, spawn

Welcome to the wrong side of twenty-five. The expiration date on your eggs is officially in sight. Tick tock. Love, Mom

This was the text message Kate Friedman woke up to on the morning of her twenty-sixth birthday, but her mother’s maternal adoration and helicopter parenting began while Kate was still in utero. Never shy about pushing her only daughter to study harder, to dump her loser boyfriends, to move to less rapey neighbourhoods, Kate’s mum has given some truly hilarious but often sage advice over the years. It wasn’t until Kate began sharing her mother’s messages online that she realized quite how many people would find her mother as hysterical as she does. Over, 700,000 people follow @CrazyJewishMom on Instagram, and this side-splittingly funny mother-daughter duo has been featured in media around the world.

From taking Kate to buy her first bra at a speciality drag-queen shop, to stalking a Princeton admissions officer across state lines, to posing as her daughter on multiple dating sites, Mother, Can You Not? is Kate’s brilliantly funny and affectionate story of life with her fabulous, eccentric mother.