I loved the look of this book, which is effectively a collection of essays on a range of topics by various females, but was worried that this would be a feminist warrior-type collection that would get on my nerves; fortunately, I was very pleasantly surprised and thoroughly enjoyed ‘Life Honestly’. With plenty of topics ranging sex, motherhood, and relationships, to workplace issues and equality, there is something for everyone and the different perspectives that are offered mean that this book will please many. There were a few essays on topics which did not interest me, so I skimmed through this, but I think that is the beauty of this book. It’s one that you can dip in and out of as quickly or as slowly as you like. Highly recommended.

Really great read. It takes you on a really great journey of different emotions. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

I must confess I had never heard of The Pool until earlier this year, though a quick Google had me intrigued; an online platform where women discuss various topics from sex and relationships to health, work and general life advice. The book is a compilation of essays either taken from the website or written specifically for Life Honestly.

I really enjoyed the essays overall. It was a great book to dip in and out of; the essays are sorted by categories so it was easy to find a particular topic. There was also a nice mixture of light-hearted works and heavier material. If there was an essay that wasn't working for you, the next one might. The variety of writers (including co-creator Lauren Laverne, Juno Dawson, and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan) also means there is a variety of different writing styles which helps keep Life Honestly interesting.

However I did find some of the essays a little on the short side - which seems like an odd criticism considering I was told this in the blurb. The shorter ones lacked depth and didn't really explore their topic fully. I would be enjoying an essay and be disappointed when I found out it was a couple of pages long, I was so interested in the subject at hand that I was sad it wasn't discussed further.

The Pool is based in the UK and the majority of the writers are British, which means a lot of the essays use UK current affairs/news as springboards for discussions. While some topics are obviously universal and I think anyone male or female can relate to them; some people might not get the references. Awkwardly, in one essay I didn't know what news story was being referred to and that did hinder my reading experience. It makes me wonder how Life Honestly will be received worldwide.

Life Honestly was an enjoyable read. Some essays did have an effect on me (particularly the ones dealing with mental health) and there wasn't a writer I didn't enjoy (so many new writers I need to check out). I just wanted more. There were a lot of interesting topics that could've been given more time to be fully explored. Overall if you're a fan of non-fiction I think you'll like Life Honestly.

I was really impressed with some of this book. I found myself shaking my head in disbelief and nodding with agreement at some of what I read. It's a book that I would want my daughter to read, along with my friends. I will definitely recommend it and the website to them.

Thanks to Netgalley, The Pool and Bluebird.

This is like going to the pub with a group of interesting, bright, well-informed women, and listening to them talk about their lives. It's one to dip into - I found the theming meant that you got a whole load of essays on one topic, which was a bit much to take in. It's great to pull out and have a look at when you're feeling like a clever, opinionated take on something. It's made me look up The Pool and subscribe, too, so it obviously worked on that level.

This is not my usual read at all however having read it now I am happy I did. This book was at times brutally honest, empowering but it always kept me thinking. Thank you for sending me this.

I am a huge fan of the pool so I was really excited to be approved for this. It's been great fun to dip in and out of this collection and I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys excellent writing by women.

This is a brilliant read for women of all ages, backgrounds, sexualities etc, offering sound advice, guidance and discussion on many aspects of life as a woman. I found myself connecting quite deeply to certain sections, whilst others don't quite apply to my current life stage, so I will be eager to return to this book at a later stage in life. Overall, this is a wonderful read, and an important one!

Hands down this is a book you just have to read! Not just women, but men as well. Covering many topics, these smart women with smart opinions have compiled this book into one of the best feminist works I've seen recently. Gender equality, work, love, family, education, social life, everything is covered in these essays, and they provide a great insight into the challenges women still face, the social ideals we still try to conform to, and everything in between.

Now I'm not going to go into a feminist rant, because quite frankly I'd never finish this review, but what I will say is that I can see Life Honestly becoming as famous as The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, and The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir. A real, true to life, experience packed book that grabs you, and makes you look at life with a fresh outlook, and question what is it that you WANT in life, instead of what SOCIETY THINKS you should. Be who you are and be true to yourself, and you won't go wrong.

I'm not sure why this is a book?
Taking the articles from The Pool, a website dedicated to women and writing and the things they like to think about, it definitely has some appeal somewhere for what it's trying to do. While it doesn't quite deliver on smart girls talking about the world, there are some really interesting moments. If only the entire book had been about feminism and what it's like being female, as opposed to other things that I didn't really want to read. It was okay, but I'd rather just go and read the articles on the website than read it in an e-book.

This is an interesting book to dip in and out of as the ladies of 'The Pool' give their opinions of everything from equality to clothing. Each topic is broadly dealt with under one heading with several different articles being written by several different people to give you different viewpoints but I couldn't help but feel some of the ground was covered over and over again by different people.

Don't let the 3 stars put you off trying this book - some people will love it, but my advice would be to dip in and out instead of trying to read it like a novel.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for my preview copy in exchange for an honest review.

New to me this was a dip in and out book which I thoroughly recommend to anyone with an interest in women's issues - the subtitle Strong Opinions from Smart Women pretty much tells you everything you need to know to begin the book.

It will inspire and embolden you - and I would suggest that anyone with a daughter of teen years and above should buy this book and allow her to read it for herself.

I was already signed up to The Pool when this collective popped up in my newsfeed. Very happy to read it and to recommend it. It's contemporary and interesting. I did skip through some of the articles, as not all were relevant to me, but that's a plus factor in this format.

I’m such a fangirl of The Pool and the brilliant work they produce daily. I was delighted to get my chubby hands on an advance copy of this collection and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Will definitely be buying extra copies for my mates.

An essential set of essays from my favourite platform for news and views from women I admire. I like the fact that the length of the pieces varies in length so you can dip in and out at will. Bold, thought-provoking, inspiring and bloody well written. Would heartily recommend.

In 2015 music presenter Lauren Laverne teamed up with former Cosmopolitan editor Sam Baker to create The Pool, a repository of thoughts and musings on all aspects of life, by top female journalists. The aim was to create a safe place where women could read honest opinions on everything from love, sex, career, children, family, relationships, fashion, health, and more, or as it’s described in Sam Baker’s introduction: ‘A bull-shit free, truth-telling zone. This is how it is. The anti-Instagram, if you like, where the pain, stress, ridiculousness and joy of everyday life was not airbrushed away.’

Life Honestly, is a compendium of those articles. Varied in content, style, and length, it’s the kind of book equally as suited to dipping into whilst you wait in line as it is to curling up with a glass of wine and feeling a sense of solidarity with your sisters. There’s light hearted pieces about the role fashion plays in your life, heartbreaking ones about rape, inspiring reflections on events such as the Repeal The Eighth campaign, and broad articles on gender politics.

Contributors include Bryony Gordon, Daisy Buchannan, Sali Hughes, Lauren Bravo, Natasha Gordon and many other bright and sassy women. I’d like to hang around with them; have a chat. I have a feeling it would be bold, bright, and brilliant. A bit like the writing in this book.

My copy of this book was generously provided by the publisher via Netgalley.

I hadn’t heard of The Pool website before now, although some of the authors in this book are familiar to me. Having gone over to look, it’s probably a good thing that I wasn’t aware of the site before getting the book: advertising itself as “a platform for women who are too busy to browse” with tons of odd scheduling, with a layout that doesn’t fit onto my oversized laptop screen (?!), I think I’d have been a lot more sceptical about committing to this title if I had. I’m sure at one point my life philosophy would have fit more comfortably into The Pool’s “squeeze more essay reading into your Woke-but-still-trying-to-do-it-all middle class professional woman lifestyle”, and maybe one day it will again. But for now, I’m quite happily not doing it all, and don’t need a website to help me try to.

Anyway, this is not a review of my instinctive reactions to a website, it’s a review of my instinctive reactions to a book (which might, by definition, struggle to engage its target audience of “women too busy to read”, but I’m sure they’ve got their market research covered). Life Honestly is a collection of content that’s appeared on the website, alongside some things that haven’t, broken down by theme and covering a range of viewpoints within that theme. Although, as I note, the concerns raised are very much of a particular type of woman: aged 30-40 with a good career but living in London and therefore unable to get onto the housing market (a demographic I’m literally joining at my next birthday), there is attention paid to getting a range of viewpoints within that group: women of colour, trans women, one non-binary author and some disabled perspectives are all included. There’s also a real focus on lived experience in each essay – I can’t think of a single example which was not, in some way, connected to the author’s life experiences.

In grounding itself in the lived experiences of multiple authors, with all the contradictions and incompleteness that entails, Life Honestly is inherently going to be hit-and-miss for any given individual reader too. Honestly, I found large parts of the first half frankly quite irritating, and not just because the introduction gushes about creating space for honest conversations like those found in Cosmopolitan magazine, of all places. Sections on politics and work felt in hindsight like a necessary starting point for the book, but they’re also sections where the topics covered are quite narrow without any clear acknowledgement of what’s missing. The “love, sex and relationships” section was unrepentantly heteronormative. Similarly, “body” and “womb” sections contain no acknowledgement of the diversity of experience on these topics, particularly for trans women. I am sympathetic to the fact that feminist reproductive justice does mean autonomy over our wombs and vaginas for many women – and that the lack of attention paid to the needs of non-male, generally female-coded bodies, in healthcare is also an enormous problem – but that’s it’s not the only issue that women face, nor is it relevant for everyone.

It wasn’t until I got to the section on mental health that I started consistently appreciating the essays, and I’m very aware that this is because I reached a section which directly interested and impacted me. Even here, the slice of context being presented is narrow: it does feel at the moment that conversations around mental health are a constant call to arms over the need for conversation and assistance, without much acknowledgement that unless you can afford to pay for private healthcare, those of us in the UK are stuck with extremely poor and inconsistent infrastructure for meeting these needs. Still, it helped to reach a section that I actually enjoyed, because it set me up for greater enjoyment and less scepticism towards the rest of the book. Still, the nagging feeling that I was reading something incomplete that doesn’t really own its incompleteness never really went away.

So, by all means, if you are in its target audience, you will likely find things to enjoy in this book – although its probably one to be dipped into over a long period of time rather than read through from cover to cover in dedicated sittings. I guess my disappointment stems from the fact that Life Honestly feels shallow – less an Olympic swimming pool than a kid’s water play area. I’m not sure what the counterfactual to this looks like: I suppose it would be less reproduction of essays which worked in website format but don’t sit super well in a book, and more attention to coherent, dedicated content that would fit well in this format, which would entirely defeat the purpose of publishing a collection of essays from a website. Life Honestly also, unfortunately, joins a long and disappointing tradition of feminist viewpoints which – despite in this case including a range of identities within its authors – still centres the a particular type of White, middle-class, heteronormative female experience while relegating anything that does not fit this mould into the margins. And honestly, in 2018, I think we all need a bit more than that.

Rating: Six essay-inducing feelings about the London housing market out of ten

This is an essential collection of essays that everyone should read from secondary school age onwards.

Lifestyle counselling from the female perspective on a range of topics affecting women in today's world. To my relief, this collection is not the hardline feminist ranting I was dreading from the subtitle and contributors chosen from their professional or social media profiles. Instead, this is a candid and generous sharing of valuable lessons-learned from personal experience. There are some trendy catchphrases to discover, such as “charm” (and “imposter”) syndromes, “himpathy” and “emotional labour”, as well as the topical and ubiquitous #Me too tag line - and the quality of the writing is variable, but on the whole, the psychobabble is kept to a minimum and there is genuine and thought-provoking insight.

Sadly, this is not my type of book at all. There's no real theme, beyond 'stories by women' and I found it very repetitive. I struggled through to 20% but realised I was skimming a lot, so I gave up. I'm sure this is someone's idea of a brilliant book, but it's not mine. Thank you for the opportunity to read it.


Receiving an ARC did not affect my review in any way.