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ninetalevixen 's review for:
I received an advance review copy from Sourcebooks through Netgalley; all opinions are my own and honest.
I believe that this book was written with good intentions, and I was at least engaged enough to read through to the end. Even if I had major disagreements and/or reservations regarding a lot of the advice.
To be quite honest, some fundamental ideas in this book made me uncomfortable. The first is the publication of excerpts from a dead daughter's diary; for all I know she would be happy with this use of her words, but if my mom even read my journal I would feel mortified and betrayed. Either way, several of the quotes didn't seem relevant or totally applicable, so I wasn't sure they were necessary in the first place. The author also unironically refers to "authors as diverse as Mark Twain and Jack Kerouac"; the way relationships are discussed seems to dismiss the existence of not just aromantic individuals, but people who are genuinely happy being single; there's also a distinction drawn between "women" and "girls" (women, it is implied, are better, more Adult) which just seemed unnecessary.
In some sections, the logic just didn't make sense to me. Habits are only effortless after they've been formed, for example: to create new ones, you have to deliberately design them, incorporate them into your life, and practice them until they actually become habits. Also, maybe it's just my interpretation but "Our only job in life is to try, fail, try, succeed, try, tweak, and try again until we either succeed or we get tired of that particular experiment" seems to read as "We either keep trying until we succeed or give up" — and I can't honestly agree with that binary, or the idea that it is our sole purpose in life. Readers are also told to essentially ignore pains (such as when beginning to work out), which is not good blanket advice because it can be a signal that you're doing something wrong and therefore hurting yourself. Potentially seriously.
Finally, I couldn't really tell whether there was rhyme or reason to the organization of the worksheets, since they ping-pong from the positive to the negative — if I were actually filling them out, I would find it jarring even if I was just looking for one in particular. And as someone who enjoys a good personality quiz, the polarized answers made them seem more gimmicky than insightful.
I believe that this book was written with good intentions, and I was at least engaged enough to read through to the end. Even if I had major disagreements and/or reservations regarding a lot of the advice.
To be quite honest, some fundamental ideas in this book made me uncomfortable. The first is the publication of excerpts from a dead daughter's diary; for all I know she would be happy with this use of her words, but if my mom even read my journal I would feel mortified and betrayed. Either way, several of the quotes didn't seem relevant or totally applicable, so I wasn't sure they were necessary in the first place. The author also unironically refers to "authors as diverse as Mark Twain and Jack Kerouac"; the way relationships are discussed seems to dismiss the existence of not just aromantic individuals, but people who are genuinely happy being single; there's also a distinction drawn between "women" and "girls" (women, it is implied, are better, more Adult) which just seemed unnecessary.
In some sections, the logic just didn't make sense to me. Habits are only effortless after they've been formed, for example: to create new ones, you have to deliberately design them, incorporate them into your life, and practice them until they actually become habits. Also, maybe it's just my interpretation but "Our only job in life is to try, fail, try, succeed, try, tweak, and try again until we either succeed or we get tired of that particular experiment" seems to read as "We either keep trying until we succeed or give up" — and I can't honestly agree with that binary, or the idea that it is our sole purpose in life. Readers are also told to essentially ignore pains (such as when beginning to work out), which is not good blanket advice because it can be a signal that you're doing something wrong and therefore hurting yourself. Potentially seriously.
Finally, I couldn't really tell whether there was rhyme or reason to the organization of the worksheets, since they ping-pong from the positive to the negative — if I were actually filling them out, I would find it jarring even if I was just looking for one in particular. And as someone who enjoys a good personality quiz, the polarized answers made them seem more gimmicky than insightful.