Assessment:
Plot/Idea: Nocero’s year-long guide to a blissful life is a combination of meditative reflections, encouragements, and action items. The reader can follow the calendar Nocero sets or bounce around the guide; the author offers space for what the reader needs. Some readers may find the action items difficult to complete without more guidance from the author
Prose: Readers familiar with meditation, reflection, or contemplative studies will be able to engage with this curriculum with ease, whereas beginners may find some of the action items more challenging with the brevity of the guidebook.
Originality: Readers of self-help guides will find familiar quotes, meditations, and action items; the uniqueness lies within Nocero’s calendar format.
Character/Execution: Nocero is bright and uplifting throughout. She is direct in offering the knowledge she has, yet she is gentle and displays sincere excitement for the changes readers may discover ahead.
Date Submitted: October 04, 2022
“Set the example; choose one good thing to do for another today,” Nocero advises on March 1, after a thoughtful, paragraph-length essay on leading by example and an on-point quotation from the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca. Each day of the year occasions a full page of similar content, highlighted by Nocero’s engaging, original reflections, which tend to be warm, even insistent affirmations that celebrate wandering, living in the moment, aspiring to new heights, and more: “The sun has risen,” she writes for April 20th, “and so will you as you ascend the spiral staircase of life, ready to take in its majesty one step at a time. Now go!”
Nocero offers a wealth of inspirational content keyed to the passages of a year. It can be repetitious if you plow straight through, but taken as it’s intended, read over weeks and months, her distinctive voice sets this guide apart, reading first as a coach but then, as the days pass, as something closer to a conscience, encouraging and exhorting, insisting that now is the time to dare to do great things.
Takeaway: A full year’s worth of fresh, enthusiastic inspiration packed into an inviting guide.
Great for fans of: Max Lucado’s Grace for the Moment, Julia Cameron.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
