The Review Vista

The Review Vista Here, we celebrate diverse perspectives. Enjoy the richness of every narrative, one post at a time. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases
(1)

Texas, USA

I almost didn’t pick this book up. It was sitting on a shelf between two thicker, louder novels, and something about its...
06/10/2026

I almost didn’t pick this book up. It was sitting on a shelf between two thicker, louder novels, and something about its quietness made me pause. I read the back cover standing in the aisle, put it down, walked away, came back, and bought it.

I still can’t fully explain why. Sometimes a book just calls to you before you understand what it has to say.

Joan G. Robinson’s When Marnie Was There broke me open in ways I wasn’t expecting. I went in thinking it was a gentle children’s mystery. What I got was something that felt uncomfortably personal, like Robinson had somehow written about a version of me I’d never told anyone about.

Anna is twelve years old and already exhausted by the effort of existing around other people. She doesn’t know why she feels so separate from everyone, why belonging seems to come naturally to others but feels impossible for her. She just knows she’s on the outside of something she can’t name.

I read those early pages with a kind of recognition that made me uncomfortable, the way you feel when someone describes a private struggle you thought was uniquely yours.

Then Marnie appears. And I don’t want to say too much about her because half the magic of this book is discovering her slowly, the way Anna does. What I will say is that their friendship is unlike anything I’ve read; tender and strange and built on a kind of understanding that goes deeper than words.

Reading their scenes together, I kept thinking about the people in my own life who saw me before I could see myself.

Robinson writes with this quiet, unhurried patience that feels increasingly rare. She doesn’t rush anything. She lets the mystery breathe, lets the emotion build slowly until it’s sitting heavy on your chest without you even noticing it got there.

There were moments I had to stop reading just to process what I was feeling; not because anything dramatic had happened, but because something had shifted so subtly and so completely that I needed a moment to catch up.

The ending undid me. I’m not going to say why. But I sat with the closed book in my lap for a long time afterward, thinking about loneliness, about belonging, about the invisible threads that connect us to people and places we can’t always explain. About how sometimes love reaches us in ways we don’t recognize until much later.

This isn’t a loud book. It won’t grab you by the collar and demand your attention.

It will simply sit beside you quietly until you realize it’s saying everything you needed to hear. And if you’ve ever felt like you were watching life from behind glass, unable to find your way in; this book will feel less like a story and more like finally being found.

There was a season of my life when I thought resilience meant enduring. Keeping a stiff upper lip. Pushing through exhau...
06/10/2026

There was a season of my life when I thought resilience meant enduring. Keeping a stiff upper lip. Pushing through exhaustion. Carrying burdens quietly. Smiling when things hurt. Surviving one difficult day after another and calling that strength.

Then I read Resilient by Rick Hanson and Forrest Hanson, and I realized how incomplete my understanding of resilience had been.

This book didn’t teach me how to survive hardship.

It taught me how to stop living as though hardship was the only thing I should prepare for. That distinction changed everything.

I also like the tone of the book. So many books about mental well-being either feel overly clinical or unrealistically inspirational. This one somehow manages to be deeply grounded while remaining incredibly hopeful. The Hansons don’t promise a life free from pain, disappointment, anxiety, or loss. They simply show that we can develop inner resources that help us meet life’s challenges without being constantly overwhelmed by them.

And honestly, that was exactly what I needed to hear.

Because if there’s one thing adulthood teaches us, it’s that life never stops happening. There is always another uncertainty, another setback, another difficult conversation, another season that tests you in ways you didn’t anticipate. I used to think peace would arrive once all my problems disappeared. This book challenged that fantasy. It suggested something far more powerful: peace isn’t something you find after the storm. It’s something you gradually build within yourself while the storm is still raging.

That idea stayed with me long after I finished reading.

One of the things I loved most about this book is that it doesn’t treat resilience as a personality trait that some people are born with and others aren’t. Instead, it presents resilience as a collection of inner strengths that can be intentionally cultivated. Calm. Gratitude. Self-worth. Compassion. Courage. Confidence. Patience. Connection.

At first glance, those qualities seem ordinary.

But as I read, I realized they are anything but ordinary.

They are the invisible foundations that determine how we experience our lives.

The book made me think about how often we invest in external success while neglecting our internal world. We spend years building careers, acquiring skills, pursuing goals, and managing responsibilities, yet many of us never learn how to build emotional strength with the same level of commitment.

That realization hit me hard.

Because I could see moments in my own life where I had focused so intensely on changing my circumstances that I forgot to strengthen the person living inside those circumstances.

What makes Rick Hanson‘s work so effective is his ability to bridge neuroscience and everyday life. Normally, when a book starts talking about the brain, my attention begins to drift. But here, the science never feels detached from reality. Instead, it becomes reassuring. Understanding that our brains naturally cling to negative experiences more than positive ones helped me stop seeing my anxious thoughts as personal failures. They weren’t evidence that I was broken. They were evidence that I was human.

And once I understood that, I became more intentional about what I allowed myself to absorb.

One practice from the book particularly stayed with me: the idea of deliberately taking in the good. Noticing moments of peace. Letting appreciation linger a little longer. Allowing positive experiences to actually register instead of rushing past them.

It sounds almost too simple. Yet I realized how rarely I did it.

For years, I had treated positive moments like passing visitors while allowing worries to become permanent residents. I could replay a mistake for days but barely spend thirty seconds appreciating something beautiful that happened.

This book helped me see that resilience isn’t only built by overcoming adversity. It’s also built by fully receiving the goodness that already exists in our lives.

That lesson alone was worth the price of the book.

As I continued reading, I found myself slowing down. Paying closer attention to my thoughts. Being kinder toward my mistakes. Becoming less reactive when life didn’t go according to plan. Not because the book magically transformed me overnight, but because it quietly shifted the lens through which I viewed myself and the world.

Instead of constantly asking, “How do I eliminate stress?” I started asking, “How do I strengthen the part of me that encounters stress?”

Instead of chasing perfect circumstances, I became more interested in developing inner stability.

That shift has been incredibly freeing.

By the time I reached the final chapter, I felt something I don’t often feel after finishing a self-development book.

I felt calmer. Not excited. Not motivated. Not temporarily inspired.

And that felt far more valuable., because inspiration fades. Motivation fluctuates. Life changes.

But an unshakable inner foundation, that’s something you can carry into every season of your life.

Resilient isn’t the kind of book that shouts life-changing advice from every page. It’s quieter than that. More patient. More thoughtful. It plants seeds instead of demanding transformation.

Weeks after finishing it, I found myself responding differently to setbacks. Recovering more quickly from disappointments. Extending more grace to myself. Finding moments of gratitude in ordinary days. Not because life became easier, but because I had started building something within myself that didn’t depend on life being easy.

And perhaps that’s the greatest gift this book offers.

It reminds us that resilience is not about becoming invulnerable.

It’s about becoming deeply rooted.

So rooted that life’s winds can bend you without breaking you.

So rooted that difficult seasons no longer convince you that you are powerless.

So rooted that happiness stops feeling like something fragile and starts feeling like something that can coexist with life’s inevitable challenges.

Few books have changed the way I think about emotional strength as profoundly as this one. I came looking for tools to handle life’s difficulties. I left with something far better: a new understanding of what it means to be truly resilient.

I resisted reading The Let Them Theory for a while.Not because I disliked Mel Robbins. Quite the opposite. I’ve enjoyed ...
06/10/2026

I resisted reading The Let Them Theory for a while.

Not because I disliked Mel Robbins. Quite the opposite. I’ve enjoyed her work before. But everywhere I turned, someone was talking about this book. Social media was quoting it. Podcasts were discussing it. Friends were recommending it. It started to feel less like a book and more like a movement.

And if you’re anything like me, the more people tell you that something will change your life, the more skeptical you become.

So I waited.

Then curiosity won.

After finally reading it, I understand why so many people are talking about it, but probably not for the reason most people think.

The brilliance of this book isn’t that it introduces a revolutionary idea.

It’s that it takes something most of us already know and forces us to confront how rarely we actually live by it.

“Let them.”

Two simple words.

Yet I realized while reading that an alarming amount of my mental energy has been spent trying to manage things that were never mine to control in the first place.

People’s opinions.

People’s choices.

People’s misunderstandings.

People’s expectations.

People’s reactions.

The book held up a mirror to that habit, and I didn’t particularly enjoy what I saw.

1. Most of My Stress Was Coming from Trying to Control Other People

This was the lesson that landed first.

As I read, I started mentally replaying situations where I’d exhausted myself trying to convince people to understand me, appreciate me, choose me, support me, or behave differently.

What struck me wasn’t how often other people disappointed me.

It was how often I volunteered for the job of managing their behavior.

The truth is uncomfortable: many of us spend years trying to control outcomes by controlling people.

We call it helping.

We call it caring.

We call it being responsible.

Sometimes it’s just control wearing a nicer outfit.

The phrase “let them” felt almost offensive at first because it requires surrendering the illusion that other people are ours to manage.

2. Rejection Becomes Less Personal When You Stop Fighting Reality

One of the things I appreciated most about the book was how practical its message is.

Someone doesn’t choose you?

Let them.

Someone misunderstands you?

Let them.

Someone decides you’re not their kind of person?

Let them.

At first, this sounded passive to me. Almost defeatist.

But the more I sat with it, the more I realized Mel isn’t advocating resignation. She’s advocating acceptance.

There’s a difference.

Acceptance doesn’t mean you like reality. It means you stop wasting energy arguing with it.

That distinction felt surprisingly freeing.

3. Not Everyone Needs to Like Me—and That’s Still Hard to Accept

This wasn’t a new lesson.

I’ve heard versions of it my entire life.

But reading this book made me notice how often I still seek validation from people whose approval wouldn’t even make me happy if I received it.

That realization stung.

Why do we spend so much time chasing acceptance from people who aren’t offering genuine connection in the first place?

The book kept bringing me back to a question I didn’t have a good answer for:

What would my life look like if I stopped auditioning for belonging?

4. The Second Half of the Theory Matters More Than the First

Most people focus on “Let Them.”

But the part that stayed with me was what comes next:

“Let me.”

Let them think what they want.
Let me keep moving.

Let them leave.
Let me build a life I love anyway.

Let them judge.
Let me stay true to myself.

That shift felt powerful because it moves the focus away from other people and back toward personal responsibility.

The book isn’t ultimately about them. It is about you; about reclaiming energy you’ve been handing away for years, and remembering where your influence actually begins and ends.

When I finished this book, I didn’t feel like I’d discovered some hidden secret of human psychology.

What I felt was something quieter.
Awareness of how often I create unnecessary suffering by resisting things I cannot control, and how much peace lives on the other side of acceptance.

And awareness that while “Let Them” sounds incredibly simple, living it consistently might take a lifetime.

Is this the most groundbreaking self-help book I’ve ever read?

No.

But that’s not why it works.

It works because the message is simple enough to remember in the moments when you need it most.

When someone disappoints you, rejects you, misunderstands you, and when life refuses to go according to plan.

In those moments, two words quietly return:
Let them.

And maybe, just maybe, those two words create enough space for you to finally choose yourself.

I couldn’t agree more.We should never be made to feel shame for the bad things someone else did to us.The girl who was r...
06/10/2026

I couldn’t agree more.
We should never be made to feel shame for the bad things someone else did to us.

The girl who was r***d on two different occasions should not be made to feel shame that she couldn’t prevent the second occurrence.

The man who was duped on more than a single occasion at different points in time should not be drowned in shame because he couldn’t avoid the other occurrences that happened after the first.

Yes, I get that you should be observant and sensitive to what happens around you.

But I repeat, this time, more personally to you:
You should never be made to feel shame for the bad things someone else did to you.

Like many people, I’ve spent most of my life looking in one direction. Forward. Toward the next milestone, the next chap...
06/10/2026

Like many people, I’ve spent most of my life looking in one direction. Forward. Toward the next milestone, the next chapter, the next version of myself.

Aging always seemed like something that happened to other people; parents, grandparents, retirees, strangers with more years behind them than ahead. It felt distant, abstract, easy to ignore.

In “Elderhood”, Louise Aronson refuses to let you ignore t, but she also refuses to treat aging as a tragedy.

That is what makes this book so refreshing.

As a geriatrician, Aronson has spent decades caring for older adults. Yet Elderhood feels like a long conversation with someone who has spent years listening to stories most of the world has stopped paying attention to.

Listening to this audiobook, beautifully narrated by Eliza Foss, I found myself thinking about people I love. My parents. Older relatives. Friends entering later stages of life. But I also found myself thinking about a person I rarely consider: the older version of me.

Not the idealized version. The real one.

The one who will one day carry a lifetime of memories, losses, joys, mistakes, scars, and stories.

1. We talk about aging as if it’s a failure instead of a privilege
One of the things Aronson does brilliantly is expose how strange our attitude toward aging really is.

We celebrate birthdays for decades, then suddenly start acting as though getting older is something embarrassing. We spend enormous amounts of energy trying to look younger, sound younger, and feel younger. Yet the alternative to aging isn’t youth. It’s not being here at all. That realization hit me harder than I expected.

Aging comes with losses, yes. But it also comes with something many people never get the chance to experience: more life. More mornings. More memories. More chances to love and be loved.

2. Older people are not finished becoming themselves
One of the most damaging assumptions about aging is the idea that personal growth belongs to the young. As though life reaches a peak somewhere in middle age and then gradually narrows. Again and again, Aronson challenges this idea.

The older adults in this book are still changing. Still learning. Still surprising themselves. Still wrestling with purpose, identity, relationships, grief, joy, and hope.

Their stories reminded me that human beings do not become static simply because they become older. We remain works in progress for as long as we are alive.

3. Needing help does not make a person less valuable
This lesson stayed with me perhaps more than any other. Modern culture worships independence. We admire people who need nothing from anyone.

But Aronson gently points out something obvious that we often forget: none of us have ever been truly independent. We entered the world dependent on others. Most of us will leave it that way too.

Somewhere along the journey, we started confusing self-sufficiency with worth. The book challenges that belief. A person’s dignity doesn’t disappear when they need assistance. Their value doesn’t shrink because their body changes.

Human worth is not measured by productivity. And thank goodness for that.

4. Medicine often treats older adults as problems to manage rather than people to understand
This was one of the most eye-opening parts of the book. Aronson shares stories that reveal how frequently healthcare systems are built around diseases rather than human beings.

An older person can become a list of medications, diagnoses, and risks. But people are never just their medical charts. They have histories. Preferences. Relationships. Dreams. Fears.

The book reminded me how much can be lost when care becomes focused solely on extending life without considering how that life is actually being lived.

When I finished Elderhood, I didn’t feel sad. I felt relieved. Relieved to encounter a book that speaks about aging without either sugarcoating it or turning it into a catastrophe.

Louise Aronson acknowledges the realities of illness, loss, physical decline, and grief. She doesn’t look away from any of it. But she also refuses to reduce an entire stage of life to those realities.

What she offers is a fuller picture. One in which older adults remain complicated, interesting, evolving, and deeply alive.

By the final chapter, I realized that this book isn’t really about old age. It’s about what it means to value a human life at every age.

And in a culture that often measures people by what they can produce, how fast they can move, or how young they appear, that message feels both rare and necessary.

Elderhood left me with a simple but powerful thought: If we’re lucky, we all grow old.

The real question is whether we’ll learn to see that future version of ourselves with the same respect, patience, and humanity that Louise Aronson so beautifully brings to these pages.

Few things shape a life more solidly than a mother’s love.And few things are harder to talk about than what happens when...
06/10/2026

Few things shape a life more solidly than a mother’s love.

And few things are harder to talk about than what happens when that love isn’t there in the way a child needs it to be.

Not necessarily because a mother was cruel. Not necessarily because she intended harm. Sometimes the deepest wounds come from mothers who were carrying wounds of their own. Mothers who provided food, shelter, education, stability, yet somehow left their children emotionally hungry.

That’s the territory When Mom Didn’t Know How to Love walks into.

And it walks into it with far more compassion than I expected.

The phrase “mother wound” can make people uncomfortable. It certainly made me uncomfortable. There’s something almost sacred about motherhood in the way many of us think and talk about it. Questioning that relationship can feel disloyal. Acknowledging pain can feel like betrayal. Even admitting you needed more can trigger guilt.

That’s one of the first things this book helped me understand.

Children are remarkably skilled at protecting the image of their parents. Many grow up learning to explain away emotional neglect, dismiss their own hurt, or convince themselves they were asking for too much. It’s often easier to believe something is wrong with you than to face the possibility that a parent simply couldn’t give what they never learned to give themselves.

That realization landed heavily.

Because it explains why so many adults walk around carrying a sadness they can’t quite name. They know something feels missing. They struggle with self-worth, boundaries, relationships, trust, or emotional regulation. Yet they can’t connect those struggles to childhood because nothing dramatic happened. There was no obvious trauma. No headline-worthy story.

Just absence.

Emotional absence.

And absence can leave scars every bit as real as presence can.

What I appreciated most about Caleb Dehan is that he refuses to turn this into a book about blame. That would have been the easy route. Instead, he approaches mothers as human beings; flawed, wounded, limited, often doing the best they could with the tools they had.

That perspective matters.

Because healing rarely happens through resentment alone. Understanding doesn’t erase pain, but it creates room for something resentment never can: clarity.

Throughout the book, I found myself thinking about how many people spend decades trying to earn a kind of love they should never have had to earn in the first place. They become caretakers, perfectionists, people-pleasers. They overachieve. Overgive. Overextend. Somewhere deep down, they’re still chasing the approval, affection, or emotional safety they missed as children.

The heartbreaking part is that most of them don’t even realize they’re doing it.

This book shines a light on those patterns with remarkable gentleness.

Not to shame them.

Not to diagnose them.

Simply to help people see them.

That distinction is important because awareness changes everything. Once you understand why certain relationships feel familiar, why certain fears keep repeating themselves, why certain emotional triggers carry so much weight, you stop viewing yourself as broken. You begin seeing yourself as someone whose story makes sense.

That shift alone can feel life-changing.

What stayed with me long after finishing this book was its insistence that healing is not about becoming someone new. It isn’t about erasing the past or pretending the wound never existed. It’s about learning how to stop organizing your entire life around an old hurt.

That process is neither quick nor easy, but it is possible.

By the end, When Mom Didn’t Know How to Love felt less like a book about mothers and more like a book about permission. Permission to acknowledge what was missing. Permission to grieve what you needed but didn’t receive. Permission to stop minimizing your experience simply because someone else had it worse.

Most importantly, it offers permission to believe that understanding your wound does not make you ungrateful.

It makes you honest.

And honesty, as this book beautifully reminds us, is often where healing begins.

I was twelve when I realized not all families were like mine. I was at a friend’s house for dinner, watching her parents...
06/09/2026

I was twelve when I realized not all families were like mine. I was at a friend’s house for dinner, watching her parents actually talk to each other, watching her joke with her siblings without fear in her eyes, and I thought: “Oh. This is what normal looks like.”

It was the first time I understood that the chaos I’d normalized; the yelling, the unpredictability, the walking on eggshells, wasn’t just how life was. It was how MY life was. And it didn’t have to be.

Ruth Wariner didn’t get that realization at twelve. She couldn’t, because her “normal” was so far beyond anything most of us can imagine that she had no reference point for understanding how abnormal it was. She was raised in a polygamist colony in Mexico, the 39th child of a man who would eventually orchestrate murders from prison. By the time she was old enough to recognize her childhood was horrific, she was already trapped in it.

Listening to Ruth narrate her own audiobook adds layers of emotion that reading can’t capture. You hear the little girl in her voice when she recalls begging her mother not to leave. You hear the flatness when describing hunger that became so normal she stopped noticing it. You hear the strength when recounting her escape at thirteen.

This isn’t just another polygamy memoir, this is Ruth’s story, told in her own words, and the difference is everything.

1. Children Will Normalize Anything to Survive
What broke my heart most about Ruth’s story is how she didn’t fully understand how abnormal her childhood was until years after escaping. Constant hunger? Normal. Moving with no warning? Normal. Mother disappearing for weeks? Normal. When chaos is all you’ve known, you have no baseline for understanding you’re being abused. Ruth describes these experiences with a child’s perspective, and that’s what makes them so heartbreaking, she’s telling you about nightmare scenarios while treating them as just “how things were.”

2. Escaping Is Only the Beginning of a Much Longer Journey
Ruth escaped the colony at thirteen, but that wasn’t the end of her nightmare, it was the beginning of a different one. She had to learn to function in a world she’d never been prepared for. She carried shame about her past, fear of her father’s followers, and psychological scars that don’t just disappear because you’ve physically left. The memoir shows us that leaving an abusive situation doesn’t mean you’re free, it means you’ve started the much longer journey of healing. We often think escape is the hardest part, but rebuilding yourself after escape is where the real work begins.

3. Some Battles You Fight Your Whole Life
Perhaps the most honest aspect of Ruth’s memoir is that she doesn’t pretend survival equals being “fixed.” She made it out, yes. She built a life, yes. But the scars remain. The trauma doesn’t disappear because you’ve accomplished things or because enough time has passed. This lesson matters because we often treat survivors’ success as proof that everything turned out fine, when the reality is that Ruth should never have had to fight so hard just to survive childhood in the first place.

Ruth narrating her own story is both heart-wrenching and empowering. You hear the survivor who transformed pain into purpose, but you also hear the echoes of the terrified child she once was. The audiobook format makes her story immediate and intimate in ways reading alone couldn’t achieve.

Ruth’s story is harrowing, filled with neglect, fear, and betrayal, but it’s also proof that even when you’re born into darkness, you can find your own light. The Sound of Gravel is Ruth’s testimony that survival is possible; not easy, not without scars, but possible.

You might not immediately warm to Hendrik Groen.He’s grumpy, cantankerous, and has no patience for his fellow residents ...
06/09/2026

You might not immediately warm to Hendrik Groen.

He’s grumpy, cantankerous, and has no patience for his fellow residents in the care home where he lives. He complains about everything; the terrible food, the patronizing activities, the smell of old people.

But stick with him, because under that cranky surface is a fighter, a survivor, and someone with a surprisingly big heart. This book made me laugh out loud and cry actual tears, sometimes on the same page.

What I love about this diary is how real it feels. Hendrik is honest about his failing body, his fading memory, the indignities of losing independence. But he’s also honest about still wanting to live. At 83, he refuses to just sit around waiting to die. So he starts the Old-But-Not-Dead Club with a few fellow residents, and they proceed to cause delightful chaos; sneaking out for unauthorized trips, smuggling in contraband, and generally refusing to behave like “good” elderly people.

This book reminded me that age is just a number, and life doesn’t have to be over just because you’re in a care home.

1. You’re Not Dead Until You’re Actually Dead
The biggest lesson in this book is right there in the club’s name: Old-But-Not-Dead. Hendrik and his friends refuse to act like their lives are over just because they’re old. They still want adventures, romance, good food, fun. They’re still fully human with desires and opinions and mischief in their hearts. This changed how I think about elderly people. I used to see them as somehow separate from me, like they’d stopped being real people with full inner lives. This book demolished that idea. Getting old doesn’t mean you stop being yourself. Your body might fail, but your spirit doesn’t have to.

2. Friendship at Any Age Is What Saves You
The friendships in this book absolutely destroyed me. These people show up for each other in ways that made me sob. They’re loyal, funny, honest, and there when it counts. What hit me hardest is that these are friendships formed late in life, when both people know time is limited. There’s an urgency and sweetness to how they care for each other. This taught me that it’s never too late to make real friends. You can find your people at 20 or at 80, and those connections matter just as much. Maybe more, because you know how precious they are.

3. Small Acts of Rebellion Keep You Human
One of my favorite things about this book is how Hendrik and his friends break small rules constantly. They’re just refusing to be treated like children or furniture. Every little rebellion is an assertion of autonomy, a way of saying “I’m still a person who makes my own choices.” This lesson stuck with me. Sometimes saying no to things that diminish you is the most important thing you can do. You don’t have to be loud or dramatic. Just quietly insist on your own dignity.

4. Humor Is How You Survive the Hard Stuff
Hendrik faces death, illness, loneliness, and loss throughout this diary. Friends die. His body betrays him. But he keeps his sense of humor about all of it. He makes jokes about walkers and writes hilarious observations about his fellow residents. This isn’t him pretending everything’s fine, it is him choosing not to let the darkness win. After reading this, I started using humor differently in my own hard times. Not to avoid pain, but to keep it from swallowing me whole. You can laugh and cry at the same time. Both are valid responses to being alive.

5. Living Fully Means Taking Risks Until the End
What I love most about Hendrik is that he keeps taking chances. He could play it safe, follow all the rules, stay in his room. Instead, he falls in love, goes on trips that worry the staff, tries new things that scare him. His attitude is basically: I’m old, what’s the worst that can happen? This shook something loose in me. I spend so much time avoiding risk, waiting for the perfect moment. But Hendrik understands that the right time is always now. Every day you choose safety over living is a day you don’t get back.

“The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen” is funny without being silly, touching without being sentimental, and honest without being depressing. It reads like an actual diary; the entries are short and natural, and you genuinely forget you’re reading fiction.

There’s something charming about not knowing who the real author is (it’s a pseudonym and the true identity is still unknown). It adds to the feeling that maybe this really is just some old guy in Amsterdam writing down his life.

But here’s what really got me: this book made me think differently about aging and elderly people. I used to be scared of getting old. Now I see it could actually be pretty great if you approach it with Hendrik’s attitude.

The book also made me more aware of older people in my own life. Since reading it, I’ve made more effort to actually talk to elderly people I encounter, to see them as full human beings with rich inner lives, not just obstacles moving slowly in front of me.

This book is hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure. It’s full of “gooey friendship stuff” but in the best way. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry (I cried as hard as I do at Pixar movies), and it will make you want to age disgracefully when your time comes.

PS: If you love grumpy-old-man stories like A Man Called Ove, read this. If you want something that’s both light and meaningful, read this. If you just need a reminder that life is worth celebrating at every age, absolutely read this. Hendrik Groen is the kind of character who grows on you until you can’t imagine life without him. This book is a gift.

Address

281 N Broad Street
Middletown, DE
19709

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Review Vista posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to The Review Vista:

Share