You Are Awesome - Neil Pasricha

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Received an arc from Edelweiss+ for an honest review

I am so glad that I finally got around to reading this book! This was my first time reading a book by Neil Pasricha and I already know that I want to pick up his other books. He has a way of providing useful tips while also being truthful.

The fact that he tells it like it is, makes his tips that more useful. It's not like other self-help books where they paint this perfect picture and then give you these unrealistic tips. No. Pasricha explains the backstory and where each of the tips came from. Whether it be a mistake, a lesson learned from his mom or dad, a divorce, a unique body deformation, whatever it is, it is real and personal to Pasricha somehow. And I really respect him for sharing these stories with us.

The story that really stood out to me was the one from his scholarship donor that was apart of the Harvard School of Business, where he told Pasricha "Find small ponds so you can be the big fish." What an interesting perspective; and for a college student wanting a job in a business related field it was something I had never thought about. Of course we want to work for the biggest and best companies, but we are all competing for those jobs, where we wouldn't do much work. Why not take the risk and be the big fish in the small pond and bring a business up from bankruptcy. It's a difficult job but it was interesting advice.

I also really enjoyed the beginning and end of this book. It started with Pasricha giving us our first tip based on the life story of his mom. I'm not going to reveal any of it because I believe it needs to be revealed when reading the book. But then the book ends with our last tip based from Pasricha's Dad's life. He began and ended with his parents and them middle was for us to learn about him. I really enjoyed this format and getting to know about him and his parents.

Overall I did really enjoy this books; the tips were actually useful and I feel like I can and will apply them to my own life.

When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

There is only so much that can be said about this tragic, yet fantastic, memoir by Paul Kalanithi.

Paul had spent decades of his life training to be a neurosurgeon. He had his life planned out. He would spend most of his time using his training to be a neurosurgeon while doing research; then spend the latter half (probably when he retired) being a writer. He was fascinated by literature, and even got his B.A and M.A in English Literature as well as multiple degrees/awards in science. However, this plan was cut short because at age thirty-six Paul was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. There is a line from the synopsis that I really found powerful, "One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live."

This book hit me right in the feels. By the end I came to love Paul and all that he dedicated his life to. I loved Lucy and how she stood by his side through it all. I loved all the people he became friends with throughout his medical career. I loved how he was vulnerable, by showing both his mistakes and his weaknesses. He doesn't try to come off as this perfect neurosurgeon, he shows us that sometimes as a doctor you are faced with difficult decisions and sometimes you make the right ones, but other times not. That aspect was probably my favorite part of the book. He was just so real with the reader, and I respect that from someone so knowledgable and intelligent, when he could've just glossed over all these things and made them how he wanted them to be. He didn't; he told us the truth.

The second part to this book was incredibly difficult to read. Especially when knowing the final outcome of his diagnosis, but it is so worth it to push through. He expressed vulnerability in this section of the book as well. This time, I felt an intense amount of emotion, instead of the respect I felt in the previous section when he revealed his mistakes. I felt grateful that he shared this horrific part of his life with us, because it was part of his life journey.

This is not a spoiler, Paul Kalanithi died March 9th 2015. I feel this is a very important detail to know before beginning this book. However, it still hit me like a truck and I was an absolute mess by the end. Tears like a downpour on my face. This is a difficult read, especially when knowing that he unfortunately passes away, but I would still highly recommend it. Paul is a beautiful writer and I wish I could've read more of what he would've wrote.

Dear Sweet Pea - Julie Murphy

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was a cute middle grade story about a girl named Sweet Pea. Her parents have just told her they are getting divorced because her dad has recently come out as gay. Along with that her dad is moving out, but only one house down the street; The house in between is Miss Flora Mae's, the towns advice columnist. While dealing with her family troubles, Sweet Pea is also dealing with the struggles of being "the weird girl" in seventh grade. That doesn't stop her stride though, it's her ex-best-friend Kiara, who all the sudden cares about boys and lipgloss, that has her down. But she has Oscar and her cat Cheese to get her through these weird times.

This really is a good premise for a middle grade story. A girl who is dealing with a divorce, public embarrassment, and friend troubles, is tasked with helping out her next door neighbor, Miss Flora Mae, with her advice column while she is out of town. Miss Flora Mae had originally planned for Sweet Pea to take care of her plants and forward her the letters, but one day Sweet Pea got a taste of what it was like to help people with their problems when she opened one of the letters. From there the story goes on. But only kind of in my opinion. More than half the story was us learning about the characters and what is happening. The "beginning" was so tragically slow that I felt unmotivated to pick it up, but as soon as I finally got past the building of the story it got better. Too bad that it was only the last 75-100 pages of the book where it actually got interesting. Plus, the ending felt rushed like the author had also gotten bored of explaining to us and just wanted to finish the book. If it this story had been explained in a shorter amount of time, this could've been a lot better.

I also had a problem with Sweet Pea. While I understand she is still going through the growing pains of being a seventh grader, she still does seem really immature and young for that age. Plus she is horrible to all of the people she considers close friends, I know that was supposed to be the point of the story, in a way, but even after she realized she did it to Kiera, she did it to Oscar and even the side character Greg. Like, she knew what she was doing and even recognized it, but didn't take the time to figure out what is making her do that and how to stop. Also how Sweet Pea handled a lot of the problems she was going through was just not realistic. I do not know anyone who would just call out someone they used to consider their best friend in the middle of seventh grade lunch, like that would be the end of you; good bye. I get that maybe this fits Sweet Pea being the weird girl but still, too me it just seems like too much.

Also although Sweet Pea fully admits that she is an overweight girl at the beginning of the book, that never really pans out or is mentioned in full again, except for close to the end when Kiera is dabbing the grease off her pizza. Which some people find disgraceful, but honestly I could care less. Anyways, I just expected this to be more empowering for overweight girls but it wasn't like that at all. It was like the author wanted to say they had an overweight main character and not include that detail at all throughout the story. There really wasn't a point to it if it wasn't going to be mentioned again.