A memoir-heavy self-help guide that (eventually) provides some solid life advice.
Zeledón offers a blend of memoir and goal-setting guide, wrapped in a promise of transformative insights.
The author takes readers on a transformative journey from feeling stuck, overwhelmed, exhausted, and unfulfilled to discovering alignment and purpose, encouraging her audience to pursue their own dreams rather than ones set by society, culture, or family. Throughout the book, readers are counseled to silence their inner critics, embrace their unique strengths, and surround themselves with supportive communities of champions to work toward crafting a purpose-driven life and leaving a lasting legacy (the book’s central theme). Drawing on her experience as an international diplomat “trained to help countries, communities, and organizations accelerate their development” and as a life coach helping “high achievers embark on their limitless journeys, surpass the boundaries that hold them back, and embrace and nourish the extraordinary within,” Zeledón helps readers redefine success, align their actions, and chart their course toward fulfillment. Among other useful tools, the author offers the formula to her “secret sauce” for balancing all of her life demands: analyzing her purpose, plotting out the steps to take her in that direction, and aligning her actions to that purpose. Though this approach to goal-setting isn’t new, Zeledón does a solid job of simplifying the process, offering strong examples of how to break down larger goals into actionable segments, providing value to both beginning and experienced goal-setters. (Some readers of self-improvement literature will recognize the influences of Carol Dweck’s Mindset and Simon Sinek’s Start with Why.) Additionally, the author is proficient in helping readers recognize the need for limits and boundaries. Overall, there is worthwhile advice to be gleaned from this book; it just requires getting through more than 100 pages of the author’s personal narrative before reaching content applicable to one’s own life.
A memoir-heavy self-help guide that (eventually) provides some solid life advice.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781925452754
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Dean Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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