- Brave, honest, and necessary.(Nancy Pearl, NPR Seattle): Kayla Williams is one of the 15 percent of the U.S. Army that is female, and she is a great storyteller. With a voice that is 'funny, frank and full of gritty details' (New York Daily News), she tells of enlisting under Clinton; of learning Arabic; of the sense of duty that fractured her relationships; of being surrounded by bravery and bigotry, sexism and fear; of seeing 9/11 on Al-Jazeera; and of knowing she would be going to war.

With a passion that makes her memoir 'nearly impossible to put down' (Buffalo News) Williams shares the powerful gamut of her experiences in Iraq, from caring for a wounded civilian to aiming a rifle at a child. Angry at the bureaucracy and the conflicting messages of today's military, Williams offers us 'a raw, unadulterated look at war'? (San Antonio Express News) and at the U.S. Army. And she gives us a woman's story of empowerment and self-discovery.
- rewiew 2: Kayla William's Love My Rifle More Than You opens with a bang: 'Sometimes, even now, I wake up before dawn and forget I am not a slut'
Now that's a first sentence.
And the first two chapters are -aside from a few language issues- about as perfect as two first chapters can be. It is a collage-style meditation on being 'young and female in the US Army', a series of anecdotes, joke, scenes and clips of dialogue thrown into a big old pot, making a delicious literary stew. It reminded me of Herr's Dispatches or O'Brien's The Things They Carried. When I reached page eighteen, I wrote in my notes, "Man, I love this book. I hope the whole thing is a series of non-chronological stories like this one."
review 3 - This is exactly what I would have written, with one exception: I hesitate to harp too much on her description of the in-bitching. It might be boring as shit (and it is 'painfully so') but it's more honest than the blowhard stuff that fills a lot of the other memoirs I've read. In particular, the way she described her relationships with other women was so honest it made me wince. Quite a few women have communication issues with other women (a sign of immaturity?). She never admits that immaturity out right, but it?s clear she is admitting things that she knows are not a very good reflection of her (It?s a central theme of the book, IMO.). Quite often, these war memoir writers only admit mistakes in actions/decisions in battle or a meeting, then point the finger to who should be blamed for misleading them. I haven?t seen many authors admit their character defects/bad relationship choices the way she does- and it?s those things that drive life.