Elyse Myers Goes Unfiltered In New Book That’s a Great Question, I’d Love to Tell You — Read An Excerpt (Exclusive)

Elyse Myers has answers for you.

In her upcoming book, That’s a Great Question, I’d Love to Tell You, the TikTok influencer, 32, shares some of her signature cringeworthy anecdotes from young adulthood, neurodivergent advocacy and snapshots of life since meeting her husband. Some may recognize Myers from the viral 2021 TikTok video in which she recounted her “worst first date” with a man who tricked her into buying him 100 tacos from a Taco Bell drive-thru.

Four years later, Myers’ has plenty to share about dates that went right, with beloved husband Jonas Myers. His transformational role in her life is evident throughout her new book, as well.

“The structure of the book is random, random, random, random. And then you meet Jonas, and then it starts to be very chronological in that way,” the author reveals to PEOPLE. But her husband isn’t the only one that makes an appearance — she shares that his collection of personal stories is a gift to her two young sons, August and Oliver.

“In the gratitude section I read to my sons, I said, ‘All these stories are what led me to you. So it’s like now we’re all caught up,'” Myers recalls. “To give this to them is really special.”

Writing anecdotes down is a new format for Myers, who typically posts story-time videos wherein she narrates the plot in real time. Not relying on her face and body language to perform a story was one challenging aspect of the writing process, Myers tells PEOPLE.

“I got really self-conscious of, ‘Are people actually still going to feel the same way about what I’m making, or are they not going to be able?'” Myers says.

She also notes that her personal transformation over the past four years, since gaining a following on social media, has given her plenty to reflect on.

“I’ve gone through many really high highs and super deep, depressive lows for long periods of time. I’ve taken breaks, I’ve come back,” she explains. “I’ve done all of that in front of people, and I have not tried to edit it in a way that makes it seem more important than it is or better than it is.”

For more unfiltered narrative from Myers, read — and listen to — an exclusive excerpt from That’s a Great Question, I’d Love to Tell You below.

Elyse Myers reads from her new book

two truths and a lie

1. The sky is blue sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. Every once in a while, the sky transforms itself into a soft sheet of red and orange and pink and purple just before the sun kisses the horizon and says good night until tomorrow. Sometimes the sky becomes gray as it opens itself up and rains on the earth below it. And sometimes the sky turns into a threatening shade of green before tornado sirens begin to ring, creating a slight panic even though maybe you’ve been living in a place that has tornado sirens long enough to know everything is probably fine. Unless it isn’t fine, in which case you’ll be worried The Perfect Amount. Not that worrying The Perfect Amount can do anything to help your situation re: The Tornado, but at least you will be panicking accordingly. But then again, it’s probably nothing and you’re more worried than you need to be. Anyway, the sky is blue sometimes.

2. A boy from my past invited me to meet him at the beach one night and then asked if I was still a virgin no less than five minutes after we hugged and said “Hello, great to see you!” I refused to answer his question, because even though I could tell from the way he asked it that my answer would be the answer he was looking for, my answer was absolutely none of his business. I thought he was going to tell me he liked me Way Back When. During the 30-minute drive to the beach, I even thought, Maybe this is a date? It has all the technical makings of a date, so it wouldn’t be crazy to assume this might be a date. Apparently, he had some Virginity Business to attend to first.

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“Why does it matter?” I said as I stepped from one rock to another, trying my best to avoid landing in the puddles that pooled in the grooves of the large rocks along the cliff where he asked me to meet him. The car I drove to the beach wasn’t mine, and I would’ve rather not needed to explain to my mom why the mat under the driver’s seat was covered in Beach Mud. Mostly because she didn’t know she lent me her car in the first place.

Because I left after she fell asleep.

(This was a coincidence, of course. I didn’t plan to leave after she fell asleep just so I could take the keys out of her purse and reverse her car out of the driveway with the headlights strategically turned off so she wouldn’t wake up and find out I’d left, just so I could return her keys back to her purse before she woke up with just enough time for me to pretend I was still asleep like I had been “all night.” A mere coincidence that my borrowing of her car worked out this way.)

“It matters because it matters!” he said, so much more confidently than he had any right to sound.

He began telling me why my virginity — or possible lack thereof — mattered to him. Why it mattered to a boy from my past I didn’t even know well enough anymore to be able to discern if this was a date or not. He told me why it mattered to him and also to every boy and man and boy-man and guyish guy-man-boy on the planet and, because of this, why it should matter to me.

“Women are like roses, full of petals …” he started.

I winced at the comparison and wondered who gave him this idea and exactly how many times he had recited it to Roses just like me.

At the beach.

At night.

While standing on rocks at the edge of a cliff.

I felt my shoe land in a puddle, and my sock began to soak up as much seawater as it could hold, and then I felt it draw in a little more water after that. I would have taken my shoes off when I arrived at the beach, but I assumed we would walk down the staircase and onto the sand before the subject of my virginity was broached.

I guess not.

Actually, I didn’t think my virginity would be a topic of conversation at all tonight, or any other night after tonight that I might — but definitely won’t — see him again. He spoke with so much confidence that it made me question whether I deserved to be offended by this conversation.

“Oh. That water looks cold. That sucks.”

“It’s very cold. My sock is all wet.”

“Think of yourself as a beautiful rose, and when you are still a virgin, you still have all of your petals—”

“I don’t want to think of myself as a rose, Terence. I especially don’t want you thinking of me as a rose either.”

“—and you still have all of your petals.”

“Okay.”

“And with all of your petals still in place, you are so beautiful! Exactly as you are meant to be! Full of petals. Untouched. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I do. Please stop calling me a rose.”

“And every time you give your body to someone, it’s like they’re plucking one of your petals off and dropping it on the ground—”

“This is so weird?”

“—they drop it on the ground! Your rose becomes smaller and smaller, and it loses all its beauty. And then on your wedding night—”

I slipped once more, and my dry foot landed in another puddle. Judging by how wet the bottom of my pants leg was, this puddle was much deeper than the first.

I wonder if there were any small crabs or tiny sea creatures living in that puddle.

I wonder if my foot had landed on top of them.

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Why aren’t there any streetlights lining this road? We’re standing next to one of the only staircases that leads down to the beach, so I feel like there should be at least one streetlight. The idea that I might have just killed a small crab makes me want to cry, and my socks are emitting a squishing sound that makes every single one of my steps sound like a practical joke, and I am so cold that I’ve started to shiver.

“You should take your shoes off if you’re going to keep stepping in the water like that. You look cold.” He slinks his arms out of his tan Members Only jacket, which looks like it was taken straight off a mannequin at a thrift store. Not the kind of thrift store that’s actually thrifty, but the kind of thrift store that doesn’t have any price tags because the people who can afford to shop there don’t need to bother themselves with price tags.

Once his jacket is all the way off, I think he’s going to hand it to me to help me warm up.

But he doesn’t hand it to me.

Instead, he ties it around his waist.

“I’m fine, thanks. I think it’s weird you feel so invested in my virginity, seeing as it has nothing to do with you. What with all the Rose Petal Collecting and all that.”

“You really do look cold.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” “Yes. I’m fine.”

I am the definition of Not Fine.

I want to take my wet shoes and socks off very much, but I would rather wait until I get closer to my car. The last thing I need is to step on a random piece of glass or a broken seashell—and as a result, be forced to hear any more about my rose petals as I tend to a gash on the heel of my foot.

“And then on your wedding night!” he continues without any hesitation. “When you finally give your rose to your husband forever—”

“Please, stop. I am begging you to stop. If you don’t stop, I’m just going to call the police.”

I’m not going to call the police, but Terence doesn’t need to know that. I stole my mom’s car to get here, and the idea of emergency response vehicles makes me nervous. When I was six years old, I called 911 because I convinced a few kids that we could add 911 into a phone number and it wouldn’t count as dialing 911. But one single call placed to (714) 911-2345 landed me and my babysitter on the porch of my mom’s boyfriend’s house, explaining to the police that the call was my fault, and I’d felt brave while waiting next to my mom’s boyfriend’s children for our Shrinky Dinks to finish cooking in my Easy-Bake Oven.

At this point, I could be having an actual emergency, and I’d reason with myself that it’s not worth calling 911 because I don’t want to bother them and it could be so much worse! Why waste their time?

I hold up my hand like a crossing guard outside of an elementary school as I shake my leg to remove as much excess ocean water from my shoes as I can.

“Don’t you want to give your husband a rose with all its petals when you get married?”

I look at the edge of the cliff and imagine walking right off it. That would get me away from this conversation much faster than walking to my car. But then my mom might never get her car back, and she loves this car.

“Who says I want to marry a man? Or that I want to get married at all? And who says I care what anyone — besides myself — thinks about my rose and all my rose petals? And what about your rose? Let’s talk about your rose for a second!”

“Elyse, it doesn’t really work that way—”

“Yeah, I’m sure it doesn’t.” I cut him off, hoping this will stop him from teaching me any more about this magical metaphor for sex he feels so strongly about; that for the sake of all men everywhere, he has taken it upon himself to teach me all about this evening.

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Part of me wants to tell him I would have had sex with him in a car tonight, if he only would have asked. Not because I actually would have had sex with him in a car tonight, but because I would have loved to see how many seconds it took for him to teach me all the loopholes that exist in this magical metaphor, depending on who’s watching.

I also don’t want him to leave this cliff with the pleasure of hearing those words come out of my mouth, especially when I don’t mean them.

I am still a virgin after all, petals fully intact.

I hate that I know this metaphor now.

I finally make it across the rocks and back onto the grass where he’s standing. I bend down and wring out the bottom of my pants, then untie my shoelaces. I wish I would have planned ahead and put a towel in the trunk, or not have driven to the beach at all.

“Are you leaving?”

“Yes.”

“Can I walk you to your car?”

“If I say no, are you just going to walk me to my car anyway?”

“Probably. It’s really dark out here.”

“All right. Let’s go then.”

It takes all of 30 seconds for us to reach my car. Sometime between when I unlock the car doors and open the driver’s-side door, he shouts loudly, “Let’s play a game! The game where we each tell each other something we’ve never told anyone before!”

His smile makes him look like a serial killer.

“No, thanks. Good night.”

I pop the trunk of my mom’s car, and I throw my shoes and very wet socks into the back before closing it way too loudly.

“Do you know what a Fleshlight is?”

I pretend I didn’t hear his absurd question and climb into the car. I cannot physically handle being here any longer or I am going to say something I regret. At best, I heard his question wrong. At worst, I heard his question right and tonight is about to take its second turn into conversational territory I’m beyond uncomfortable exploring with him.

“Goodbye, Terence.”

“That’s my confession!” he says. “I have a Fleshlight. Do you know what a Fleshlight is?”

I am silent and completely still for many seconds.

And then laughter explodes out of my mouth as he watches me lose the last of my self-control. He looks back at me as if what he just confessed isn’t the most absurd fun fact he could shout at me after he just spent the entire evening telling me how sacred and important my sexual purity is to him and all mankind. For him to punctuate his unrelenting and unsolicited advice regarding my own virtue with a confession about owning a pretend flashlight that he can discreetly masturbate into makes more sense than I ever want it to.

It makes more sense than it ever should.

“Oh yes,” I manage to say through tears and laughter that I refuse to disguise any longer this evening. “Yes, I know what a Fleshlight is. And just to confirm, you did say Fleshlight, correct? You didn’t say ‘flashlight.’ You said Fleshlight. F-L- E- S- H- light. Fleshlight.” I spell his confession out as plainly and evenly as I can before I say anything more.

“Yes, that’s right. Okay, your turn! Tell me something you’ve never told anyone before.”

I take multiple deep breaths and steady myself before speaking again.

“Something I’ve never told anyone … hmm … ” I do my best to take my time and look as though I am in deep thought. I hum thinking noises in the back of my throat, and I stare purposefully at my hands as they trace the stitching on the steering wheel in front of me. I stare off into the distance, then turn to Terence. “Mmm … okay, I’ve got one!”

Terence rubs his hands together as if the memory of whatever I’m about to confess is going to taste delicious as he kills me on this dark, oceanside cliff and then eats my body to get rid of the evidence.

“Something I’ve never told anyone.” I blink and try not to smile. “I don’t ever want to hear about your Fleshlight ever again, and I hope that if you ever think of me while using it, you immediately go soft and lose your ability to finish. And I hope that you tell your future wife all about your Fleshlight immediately after you ask her if she’s a virgin. So there you go! A bunch of things I have never told anyone before! Good night!”

I finally force the car door closed and drive away as fast as I possibly can. I have not seen or heard from Terence since, but I sincerely hope Terence and his Fleshlight and his wife are very happy together.

Yes, Terence is married! Congrats, Terence!

And finally, number three:

3. All the blood in my body was replaced with cold-pressed organic apple juice when I was seven years old and I never bothered to change it back.

Okay, time to guess!

Which one is the lie?

Excerpt credit: Excerpted from the book THAT’S A GREAT QUESTION, I’D LOVE TO TELL YOU, provided courtesy of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 2025 by Elyse Myers. Reprinted by permission.

That’s a Great Question, I’d Love to Tell You comes out Oct. 28 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.