Review - The Power

The Power
by Rhonda Byrne
Date: 2010
Publisher: Atria Books
Source: bought from Chapters

Did you ever wish you could have everything you ever dreamed of?  Did you know what you wanted, but didn't know how to go about getting it?

Now the author of the bestselling The Secret reveals The Power, a book about the secret behind The Secret.  Through pages filled with inspiring messages, fascinating quotes, and pretty pictures, the author reveals how to achieve your heart's desires in the areas of wealth, relationships, health, and career.

Yeah, yeah... I know I vowed never to read this or give money to the author.  But I was going through some tough times, my mom said it was good, and I found a brand-new copy for about $10.  So how could I really say "no"?

I finished this book last night.  I could only take it in small doses.  Not because it was that bad, but simply because I often need a bit of time to digest information when I read books like this.  I do like the way the book was set up.  It's full of inspirational quotes placed throughout the text (from people like Albert Einstein and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), and each chapter ends with a section called "Points of Power" that briefly outlines the main ideas of the previous pages in bullet form.

The book itself is also very pretty.  It's one of those books that just wouldn't be the same in e-book format (at least, not right now).  The whole thing, from cover to cover, is in full colour, with pretty artwork adorning every page.  The hardcover would make a great gift for someone, if they were interested in this sort of thing.

I've never actually read The Secret (or seen the movie), but you don't need to have done so to read and understand The Power.  I don't think it's really a sequel; if anything, it's more like The Secret 2.0, adding more information about the Law of Attraction that the author has learned since the publication of the first book.  As with many books of this nature, the "instructions" can sometimes be a little vague... although, this book probably has more concrete instructions than some other books.  I've read a few other books on the topic, and I never really came away with much of an idea of what I was supposed to do.  The Power is a little better in that regard.

That said, there were quite a few things in this book that I didn't agree with, and some of the ideas seemed somewhat shallow to me (which was one of the reasons I never bothered to read The Secret; I'd heard it focused too much on material wealth).  If I'm going to use the Law of Attraction in my life, I'd prefer to use it on things like my health and relationships... not getting a fabulous new skirt.  Some of the ideas were also not very realistic for certain people and could easily cause frustration.  The idea that it's such an easy thing to change your thoughts might add more pressure and feelings of failure to someone suffering from a mental illness, for example (where the inability to control your thoughts is part of the disease).

But I did take away an important realization, and that is that I often focus on the negatives when I should be focusing on the positives.  I don't know if I'll ever get everything my heart desires, but I know it can't hurt to put more positivity out there.  And even if that's all I got from this book, I'd say it was $10 well spent.

Interesting: 3/5
Informative: 2/5
Writing: 4/5
Message: 4/5

Overall: 3.25 out of 5