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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Review: The Princess Guide to Life

Title The Princess Guide to Life
By Rosie Blythe
Genre Self help/non-fiction
Pages 312

First sentence From supermodels to precocious 8-year-olds, nearly everyone has some anxiety about their looks.

Synopsis
Everybody has the wrong idea about Princesses. Sure, we dress like superstars and rarely have to buy our own drinks, but we're not divas. (Life's too short to throw a tantrum because a barista spelled your name wrong.)

In this entertaining and insightful book, Rosie Blythe offers a fresh perspective on what it means to be a powerful woman in the 21st century. (from Goodreads)

What it has going for it
I'm not big into self help non fiction. Though I wouldn't exactly categorize this one as self help, there isn't exactly a better way to do it. So, for the sake of calling it something let's just stick with self help. The author of this one contacted me and asked me to review it and after reading the description I thought, "I could use some princess-afying", so I agreed. The book covers everything from appearance to personality to handling difficult people and even has a section on books and movie recommendations. The section on Creating a Princess Persona was dead on! I loved it. Sure, the title of that section sounds like it's going to tell you to be all prissy but it wasn't. It had a great part about femininity vs Feminism that was just perfect. Mostly I loved that this book just made me want to grab life by the horns and love it and that's just what I needed right now. 

What's lacking
I only had two problems with this one. First, it wasn't anything new. It's not like I haven't read or heard these things before, so it's not horribly original. And second, There was a section on handling difficult people that listed all types of jerks but didn't really offer THAT much advice on dealing with them. It just went on and on about the different types of a-holes in the world and, yeah, I already know about them all. I've worked customer service my whole life! Other than that the book was fun and makes you want to better yourself. 

Yea or Nay?
If you like this kind of book, whether for light reading or serious soul searching, yes, I'd recommend it. 

9 comments:

  1. When I read the title, my immediate thought was, "Oh, Jenny's gonna hate this book!" Lol. I guess I was wrong. But, I didn't realize it was non-fiction either. If it were fiction, you would've hated it, I know it!

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  2. Interesting. Not something I would likely read, but it sounds more thought-provoking than it appears to be. Glad it was a good read for you.

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  3. I'm not a fan of self-help books, no matter how they're disguised, and when they don't even bring anything new, I really don't see the point.

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    1. I don't mind them as long as they're light and this one did have some awesome advice.

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  4. Not a big fan of self-help books or princesses, so don't think this is the book for me. Most of the princess stories I read as a girl had them waiting around for their prince to rescue them, while I wanted to be the one fighting the dragon and rescue myself! Glad you enjoyed it, even if it wasn't all that original. Sometimes it's in the presentation, so maybe that helped.

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  5. It’s nice to read advice packaged in a new way at least. :) With a tiara.

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  6. I don't read self-help books... which might explain why I'm so disorganized and unfixed, but I totally thought this was a fiction book from the title and cover!

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