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honeycoffeereads 's review for:

Untamed by Glennon Doyle
2.0

I'll admit - I don't know if it's the Coronavirus and the state of the world in general, but my patience for this quickly ran out. The first several essays made me excited as Glennon described finding liberation to live her life freely, her daughter's rare emotional sensitivity that the world often forgets to engage with, and realizing her sexuality. But then Part 2 started to feel preachy as she began explaining how she uses her intuition to guide her. Almost every sentence felt too similar or a direct copy cat of each with same openers over and over again or using the same words to describe her feelings. As the third part of the book returned back to essays, her journey through her divorce, raising her kids, and self-love became less fascinating and more self-aggrandizing. Many of the essays didn't introduce anything and recycled how she gave something up that was holding her back or changed her mind about past beliefs. When I looked back on my bookmarks in a ebook version, I found that the point she made on page 51 about not abandoning herself for anyone's expectations or beliefs anymore was essentially the ending to the whole book around page 272. As a whole, Glennon does not shy away from putting her imperfections and mistakes out in the world, and explores relateable ideas for women relinquishing the patriarchy's hold over them. It's a true vulnerability that is what's probably made her so popular since her first book. However, I found that the magic or spark that so many reviewers gave this extinguished pretty early, and left me with very few interesting ideas that left me inspired to adapt/use/etc.