A go-to guide for readers navigating loss, reinvention, or the desire to live more authentically.
Joy chronicles a bold act of self-reinvention through world travel in this debut memoir.
After making the heartbreaking decision to end her marriage and leave the only life she has ever known, Joy sets the goal of filling the final seven pages of her “married” passport in an effort to figure out who she is and what she truly wants; only then will she reclaim her maiden name and forge a new path. Living an adrenaline-fueled life of outdoor sport in Vail, Colorado, Joy realized she was living her husband’s dream more than her own. An Eleanor Roosevelt quote ("You must do the thing you think you cannot do”) emblazoned on a gift from her grandmother took on personal meaning when a confident voice said, “Leave your marriage.” In short order, Joy ends her marriage, leaves her home, and loses her decade-long career at a high-end jeweler. Testing the theory of “get[ting] lost to be found” she listens to yet another voice telling her to “go,” which launches her into a solo journey that carries her from Europe to Asia and beyond. Although she sees Paris, the Swiss Alps, the Andaman Sea, India’s sacred spaces, and New Zealand’s coastlines, these touristic sights become secondary to the focus on the inner transformation she undergoes. With candor and emotional clarity, Joy documents how grief, disorientation, and financial uncertainty can give way to resilience, intuition, and a reclaimed sense of purpose. What distinguishes this memoir from the many “escape through travel” narratives is its balance between external adventure and internal reckoning. The book’s gentle insistence is that meaning isn't found, but embodied, through small moments of courage and surrender. Readers are not invited to marvel at exotic destinations but instead recognize themselves in Joy’s struggle to let go of the familiar. The writing is direct and emotionally open, allowing the lessons on synchronicity, manifestation, and empowerment to feel lived rather than prescribed. Comparisons to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love are inevitable, but Joy’s work transcends such facile comparisons by emphasizing the applicability of her journey to the reader’s own life.
A go-to guide for readers navigating loss, reinvention, or the desire to live more authentically.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9798999900500
Page Count: 295
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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