Review: Wildly Human by Christina Barnes

Title: Wildly Human

Author: Christina Barnes

Buy Link: CLICK HERE

Publisher's Insight:

You have a story. It's uniquely yours. It's full of challenges, beliefs, loves, fears, successes and failures, among other things. There is no wrong story. At the present time, at the end of it, it says;

(to be continued...) today. Are you the writer or do you feel more like the reader of your story? 

This is a collection of unlikely messengers bringing you 19 concepts about life, designed to awaken the writer within you. Your thoughts are your pen and paper.

The purpose is to encourage you to connect the dots of your own story. And to love your story no matter how crazy or dysfunctional it seems. It's what makes you so wildly human. Ultimately, you'll want to rise up like a mama bear in how you love yourself, and who and what you allow into your life. As long as you're on this earth, it's never too late to write a happy ending for yourself.

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Review:

I enjoy a good book with positive anecdotes, and lessons that put us on the right track, but this time the book fell flat for me.

I've analyzed my feelings on this book until I've turned blue in the face, and have procrastinated until I felt that I couldn't any longer. So here I am, moving along and trying to get my feelings out about this book without sounding contrary or trite.

First, let's start with the positive aspects of the book. Ms. Barnes illustrated this book beautifully and quite uniquely. I'd love to have the talent she has.

And, I found that it was very easy to grasp the, "And the moral of the story is..." point in each story.

Now onto the less than exciting feelings that I had for this book.

This book is designed as a book to help women exclusively, which in and of itself is not a bad thing. The problem for me is that I felt as if the author sat down and thought of every negative stereotype  about the female gender and wrote a concise story about how we're wrong and how to make it better. It felt preachy and somewhat degrading.

My next issue with the book was the fact that each story was very simplistic in nature and felt more like story time at the library than a book of empowering anecdotes.

And as I wrap up my thoughts on this book I'll tell you why the book confused me. And this one was a biggie for me, almost a sense of false advertising if you will. On the back cover of the book it states:

Are you the writer or do you feel more like the reader of your story?This is a collection of unlikely messengers bringing you 19 concepts to awaken the writing within you. Your thoughts are your pen and paper.

Perhaps Ms. Barnes was using a metaphor here, and I'm sure she was, but it fell flat with me. I thought I understood the book (from the description from the publicity agent - who ultimately got the info from the author) to be for a writer. So perhaps this was MY folly, and I hope you will take that into consideration as you read this review.

I do want to disclose that I didn't finish reading the book. Mostly because I felt preached at, and partially because the book made me feel sad that someone would see so many faults in a woman's character. I want to be uplifted in a book, not ride 19 waves of emotion in a book with each short story.

Perhaps the stories would have been better suited for submission to a women's magazine where the point would have been seen as a shining example of what a woman can overcome, rather than an example of where womanhood has gon awry.

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I received this product for free/at a discount in exchange for an honest review, but all opinions are my own. Most books are donated to the local library for circulation, or donation to the Friends of the Library.