Review: Life with a Sprinkle of Glitter

If you love Sprinkle of Glitter, Louise Pentland's YouTube channel, then you'll adore her book. The best way I can describe it is this: you go over to your cousin's house to babysit her toddler and she imparts some wisdom to you before leaving. In beautiful glossy-paged format. (Can you tell I'm in awe?)

the book arrived in the mail on my birthday. how perfect, right?

My love for Louise Pentland goes back a couple of years. Her videos (along with Carrie Hope Fletcher's) are my feel-good, pick-me-up videos. If I'm having a bad day, it's Louise that I'll turn to. I adore seeing her with her beautiful little girl and I can honestly say that her advice has changed my self-confidence in the best ways.

I was so blessed to get to see Louise twice at Vidcon this past year. I was even invited up on stage along with some other girls (including my little sister) to ask her questions. If you happen to be reading this, Louise, sorry for making you a bit weepy with a question about your daughter!

she said she liked my flower crown. highlight of my life.

The book is divided into a series of sections, ranging from "Glitz" to "All About Love." She shares DIY projects, easy baking recipes, dating disaster stories, and tips for self-love. The best part of the book, in my opinion, is how conversationally it's written. I could imagine Louise saying it all, as if in a video!

The book is lovely in that it can be read cover-to-cover (which is what I did) or by section. While it's written to appeal to a young female crowd, I think everyone would benefit from reading it (especially her section on Kindness). This is the book that I think I will choose to curl up with (in my fluffy duvet with a cup of tea) when I'm having a not-so-good day.

Louise says it better than I can, on one of the first pages of her book:

I want you to walk away from this book and feel uplifted. I want you to feel as though you are equipped to deal with something in your life and deal with it in the best possible, positive way. I want you to feel as happy as I do.  

Perhaps what makes this book so amazing is that Louise has an earnest desire to share her wisdom about life and that she is never in any way condescending. She's honest about how she gained her knowledge and the many mistakes she made on the way.

I unashamedly love this book. The actual design of the book is beautiful, the writing is charming, and the photos are lovely and almost Instagram-esque. It would be a lovely present for a friend (like giving them a little ray of sunshine) or a very nice treat for yourself.

Just Read: The Devil Wears Prada

I just finished The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger...and I hated it.

It took me nearly six months to read (although I think being at university is partially to blame for that). I finally sat down and finished it today because I was tired of it staring at me from my bookshelf. I have to admit that I liked the premise of the novel and found the writing to be decent. I loved to hate the character of Miranda and I appreciated the character of Emily.

But I hated all of the other characters. I was never sure why I was supposed to like Andrea's alcoholic best friend, Lily, or her saintly boyfriend, Alex. Every time I began to be attracted to the bad-boy Christian, Weisberger described him in a way that repulsed me. But it was Andrea herself who really bothered me.

Andrea spends the entire book complaining about her job, Runway magazine, and her boss, Miranda. She thinks that she is better than everyone else because she aspires to work at a "real" magazine, the New Yorker. As someone interested in the fashion industry, I personally found her to be quite offensive as she looked down on everyone involved in fashion. I thought she was pretentious and stuck-up (worse than Miranda!) to condemn everyone in the industry based on her hatred of her boss.

I only completed reading the book because I was fascinated by the glimpses into the world of fashion magazines, an industry that I would love to work in one day. While I won't argue that Miranda was certainly a bitch, I thought that the energy of working at the magazine sounded intoxicating.

I hoped that the author, Weisberger, would end the book on a good note by using the character of Loretta (a woman who works for Seventeen magazine and befriends Andrea at the end of the novel) to show that Runway was not a reflection of all fashion magazines. However, Weisberger never truly articulated this point. At the end of the novel, I was simply pleased to be finished with whiny stuck-up Andy.

Maybe it's just me who hated this book so much, but I definitely wouldn't recommend it. I'm planning on watching the 2006 movie (starring Anne Hathaway as the whiny Andrea and the acting goddess Meryl Streep as the formidable Miranda) to see if it fixed any of my problems with the book.

Rating: 5/10