Never Broken by Jewel

Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story by Jewel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was pretty good (I think my ratings are getting tougher as I read more and more, so maybe the old me would have given this 4 stars). Jewel's life so far has been interesting and she's clearly learned a lot which she tries to impart. There's a lot of stuff that feels like filler. It feels like she shoved an entire poetry/songbook inside the memoir and that should be a separate book. (In fact, she already has a poetry book, so it was strange that she decided to cram all this in.) There's also a lot of cliche-sounding self-help in this book. I don't personally appreciate the mix of self-help with memoir. If she just gave a sentence of advice here or there, it would have been fine, but it was pretty heavy-handed in giving entire lists of positive-thinking and meditation-type advice. I've read books on meditation as well, and there are many authors that cover it better than Jewel. Generally, she just needed a tougher editor and a book about 3/4ths the length of this one.

Here's a good one though: "We're so busy looking for and working towards the things that will make us happy that we blow right by our actual happiness... sitting quietly under a tree, being present with your child while you read a book to them, living in a smaller home, perhaps, so you can work less and have more quality time with your family, doing fewer enrichment activities so that you and your children can experience the joy of play."

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