That’s a Great Question, I’d Love to Tell You (2025) is the debut nonfiction comedic memoir from content creator Elyse Myers, whose self-deprecating humor and unfiltered stories about dealing with mental illness have made her a popular TikTok and Instagram personality. The memoir is built on the foundation of Myers’s social media content but also includes new stories that range from humorous tales of dating disasters to earnest reflections about self-worth. Blending personal stories and hand-drawn illustrations with a balance between humor and intimacy, Myers creates an honest discussion about the challenges of mental illness and neurodivergence, as well as the difficulties of fitting in with neurotypical society. Her reflections explore The Impulse to Escape One’s Self, which is often fueled by the Inaccessibility of Social Scripts for Neurodivergent Individuals, and The Human Need for Unconditional Acceptance.

This guide refers to the 2025 hardcover edition published by William Morrow.

Content Warning: This guide and source material contains depictions of mental illness, ableism, sexual content, sexual harassment, bullying, and emotional abuse.

Summary

That’s a Great Question, I’d Love To Tell You is organized into eight parts, each of which corresponds with a different physical location to which Elyse Myers travels. The chapters vary in tone and form and include the use of free verse, numbered lists, and how-to guides, along with illustrations that emphasize the author’s emotional reactions. This guide refers to Elyse Myers by her last name when discussing her authorial choices, and by her first name when discussing the actions of her younger self as the “protagonist” of her memoir.

Part 1, “The Door to California,” focuses on Elyse’s childhood in California. Chapter 1 features a childhood story in which Elyse receives a Magic 8 Ball keychain while trick-or-treating for Halloween. Elyse personifies the Magic 8 Ball, imagining that it is a friend named “Lucy.” She uses it to make a decision about attending a friend’s sleepover, and this practice allows her to mitigate some of her anxiety around social interactions. Chapter 2 is a comedic anecdote about playing the game Seven Minutes in Heaven with her friend, Marley, on whom she has a crush. Due to her anxiety and her inability to read social cues, Elyse fails to notice that Marley reciprocates her feelings, so she accidentally rejects him.

Part 1, Chapter 3 is a brief interlude in which Elyse discovers that her best friend, Sophie, smokes cigarettes. Chapter 4 is a free-verse poem that explores the burdens of holding and protecting a child’s belief. In Chapter 5, Elyse hopes that attending community college will allow her to make new friends and shed the social anxiety she experienced in high school. During an encounter with a classmate, she has a panic attack, after which they become friends.

The single chapter of Part 2, “The Elevator to Paris,” tells the story of an experience that Elyse has while studying abroad in Paris for a semester. Elyse meets a handsome Parisian man at a bar. Over the course of the evening, she eventually discovers that she has misinterpreted his apparent interest in her and realizes that he is a sex worker who believes she will pay him for sex. When she explains her confusion, he reacts in anger.

Part 3, “The Window Back to California,” contains two chapters that detail Elyse’s brief visit to California before she moves to Australia to continue her college studies.  Chapter 7 is formatted as three numbered sections and describes Elyse’s encounter with an old school friend named Terence. She believes that Terence plans to ask her out on a date, but instead, he lectures her about the importance of her sexual purity, ignoring her increasingly frantic objections. After his diatribe, she abandons him at the beach. Chapter 8 then shifts from first-person to third-person narration, telling the story of an awkward first date with a poet who later attempts to cast the woman in a bad light by writing derisive poetry about the experience.

Part 4, “The Ladder to Australia,” focuses on Elyse’s experiences of attending college in Australia. In Chapter 10, she meets a new acquaintance named Jonas at the meat counter in a grocery store and feels an instant connection with him, though she currently has a long-distance boyfriend. Chapter 11 is a free-verse poem about her emotional distance and lack of fulfillment with that long-distance boyfriend. In Chapter 12, Elyse discusses her inability to understand the unspoken rules of society and describes her methods for navigating difficult social situations. Chapter 13 is a comedic how-to guide on how to properly make a bed with hospital corners. Then, in Chapter 14, Elyse breaks up with her unnamed long-distance boyfriend, and she meets Jonas again in Chapter 15. In this encounter, newly single and emotionally frayed, Jonas flirts with Elyse, who touches Jonas’s beard without permission. This gesture leads to the concluding chapter of Part 4: a humorous legal document titled “The Rules on Face Touching: As It Relates to Surprise Facial Hair.”

Part 5, “The Slide Back to California,” contains a single chapter in which Elyse has returned home from Australia. In the time between Chapter 16 and Chapter 17, Elyse and Jonas have maintained a long-distance quasi-relationship over video and phone calls. However, as they grow closer, Elyse fears that Jonas is too good to be true, so she tries to break up with him via text in order to prevent a worse heartbreak later. In response, Jonas invites her to visit him at his home in Kansas, and her friend Tessa convinces her to accept.

In Part 6, “The Staircase to Kansas,” Elyse takes the trip to visit Jonas. In Chapter 18, she and Jonas spend time together in the basement of Jonas’s parents’ house, experiencing their first kiss. Chapter 19 replicates an entry from Elyse’s diary in which she reflects on her visit to Kansas. She has spent her life wearing masks and personas for the benefit of others, but she feels safe enough to discard these personas around Jonas. She feels that he sees who she really is, and this fact scares her because an eventual break-up will hurt far more now. She hopes that she will always remember what it feels like to be wanted this much.

The single chapter of Part 7 is a letter titled “To whom it will never concern,” in which Elyse addresses an unnamed “you,” the ex-boyfriend of Chapters 11 and 14. She hopes that this boyfriend will be disappointed to discover that she has erased his name and identity from her stories, intending for him to be forgotten.

Part 8, “The Emergency Exit to Texas,” contains two chapters. In Chapter 20, Elyse drives 12 hours to Texas, planning to move in with Jonas. As she reaches her destination, her anxiety triggers a fight-or-flight response, and she instinctively runs from Jonas in the parking lot. She is afraid that he will decide he no longer likes her, but Jonas reassures her that he loves her and has imagined being with her ever since their first meeting in the grocery store. In the final chapter, Elyse describes her efforts to write a novel about a girl named Cynthia. She belatedly realizes that Cynthia represents her efforts to escape herself, an endeavor that she now admits is futile. She now hopes to make a home with Jonas and learn how to stay in one place.