Gorgeous pictures

The sound of sea waves has a very soothing effect on me.
In fact, living in a remote beach house is one of my dreams.
So, it's no wonder that this book immediately appealed to me.

There are 10 chapters and each one centers around a certain aspect of your personality. You learn how to be unstoppable, abundant, light, inspiring, authentic, adventurous, creative, soulful, love and grounded.
Every chapter follows the same structure: a sand story (personal life story of a woman), a lesson in waves (where the author gives some self-help advice) and a meditation exercice. These texts are interspersed with several quotes and pictures of beaches, sunsets, waves, …

If I were to judge only the beautiful photographs and the relaxing page design, this book would without doubt receive 4*.

But there's also the written content which accompanies the pictures and unfortunately I have quite a few gripes in this area.

In the introduction it immediately becomes clear that the author has an exclusively female reading audience in mind when she draws the parallels between the ocean and women. Throughout the entire book only quotes from females are included and several times (only) women are adressed directly.
Although being a woman and feminist myself, I absolutely don't see the point in discriminating men and think the author missed an opportunity to approach this subject in a wider and more objective way in order to appeal to a broader audience.

Several of the mentioned quotes are from women working for Dune Jewellery, the business the author started 11 years ago.
The idea behind the custom made jewels with sand in them is very interesting and it's totally comprehensible that people working there are also beach enthousiasts.
But by mentioning Dune Jewellery so often, this book sometimes feels more like a giant advertisement in book form rather than an ode to the sea.

Although some of the thoughts and comparisons expressed in this book are actually nice, most of the time the link with the sea/ocean seemed non-existent or very far-fetched and it kind of jumped all over the place.
It was as if the author gathered some advices from different self-help books (yes, even the words coaching and therapy were used) and then sought for a link to water, waves, beach, … just to fit them in and pass them on.

All in all, I've very mixed feelings about this book.
Maybe I just wasn't the right reader for it, as I'm sure lots of other people (mainly women who adore self-help) will appreciate the content more than I did.
This is also evidenced by the many positive reviews.
So I'd say: make up your own mind and discover this book for yourself. At least, the gorgeous pictures will give you a real taste of happiness.


*Thanks to NetGalley and Rock Point for providing a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.