Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
I was really expecting to love this book - with all the rave reviews flying around at the time it was published, I kept seeing friends and people I follow on social media going on about it and thought “I have to read it.” However, it didn’t grab me when I first started to read it. I was about 6 months pregnant and found the format of the small anecdotal chapters a little jarring. There didn’t seem to be a real narrative (even non-fiction needs one of those!), and I wasn’t finding the stories that engaging. I put it away for awhile, then when we moved house earlier this year, I decided to give it another go. The first chapter I read was about Glennon letting her Grandmother go just before she passed away; I ended up in floods of tears, as I’d had a similar situation with my own Grandmother a number of years ago. The next few chapters didn’t grab me again, then another one would just hit me and I’d be sobbing away to myself (I ended up reading this in the bath, which seems to be the only time I get to read these days with a baby!). I spent the rest of the book like this: feeling a bit ‘meh’ to many of the stories, then either completely agreeing with others or really feeling like “I need to hear this right now.” So, I wouldn’t say I agree with all of the people hailing it as the best book ever - it certainly wasn’t “unputdownable” for me - I was expecting to feel set free, my inner self unleashed and ready to tackle anything, which sadly, I didn’t. It is worth a read, though. You might find some gems of wisdom tucked away in its pages.
Originally posted on Goodreads