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18 reviews for:
Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy Seal's Journey to Coming Out Transgender
Kristin Beck, Anne Speckhard
3.1 AVERAGE
18 reviews for:
Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy Seal's Journey to Coming Out Transgender
Kristin Beck, Anne Speckhard
3.1 AVERAGE
It's incredibly difficult to rate this book. Kristin Beck is a massively impressive person. Her achievements and strengths manage to come across even in this awful book. Her story is fascinating.
However, she met Anne Speckhard at a vulnerable point in her life, and agrees to let her write this book. I'm no psychiatrist, but Speckhard comes across as a deluded narcissist. She displays no understanding of gender or gender issues, she can't write or organise thoughts, she has weird little psychobabble theories which she imposes on the narrative, and she writes about herself as an intuitive, empathetic, knowledgable, supportive individual, while repeatedly demonstrating that she is none of these things.
The book is also under-edited, the cover badly designed and executed (cover design is by someone with the surname Speckhard, so I suspect nepotism), with unfocused photos and colour choices for text and background so poorly thought out that it's difficult to read. It looks like the book was carelessly rushed out. Kristin Beck deserves better.
However, she met Anne Speckhard at a vulnerable point in her life, and agrees to let her write this book. I'm no psychiatrist, but Speckhard comes across as a deluded narcissist. She displays no understanding of gender or gender issues, she can't write or organise thoughts, she has weird little psychobabble theories which she imposes on the narrative, and she writes about herself as an intuitive, empathetic, knowledgable, supportive individual, while repeatedly demonstrating that she is none of these things.
The book is also under-edited, the cover badly designed and executed (cover design is by someone with the surname Speckhard, so I suspect nepotism), with unfocused photos and colour choices for text and background so poorly thought out that it's difficult to read. It looks like the book was carelessly rushed out. Kristin Beck deserves better.
Kristin Beck is a transgender woman who was able to come out - to herself, to her family, and ultimately to the world - after retiring from service as a Navy SEAL. This book chronicle's Kristen's journey to become herself.
I really, really wanted this book to be good. There aren't enough good trans books in the world. However, this book is not worth the electronic space it takes up on my Kindle.
1. It is narrated in third person, presumably because someone else wrote the book and just tacked on Kristen's name to make it more appealing. It is really hard to read about a person's struggles and difficulties but not be in their head space. That kind of distance made me not care as much about the story.
2. There are many, many grammar and other writing errors. Not only is "transgender" used as a noun (it's not), but Kristen is said to have given "1000%" on several occasions. Also, this author needs to learn how to use the word "literally." Overall, the book is trying too hard, similar to the first few essays I received from my eleventh grade honors English students when I taught high school.
3. This book spends way too much time 1) introducing itself (5% of the space), 2) telling about the history of Kristen's family (another 15%), and 3) focusing on her time in the SEALs (probably 30-40% of the space). Very little of the book has anything to do with Kristen's struggle, which is what I really wanted to read about.
The moral of the story is this: don't read this book, but if you must, then check it out from the library. At least then it won't be a waste of money.
I really, really wanted this book to be good. There aren't enough good trans books in the world. However, this book is not worth the electronic space it takes up on my Kindle.
1. It is narrated in third person, presumably because someone else wrote the book and just tacked on Kristen's name to make it more appealing. It is really hard to read about a person's struggles and difficulties but not be in their head space. That kind of distance made me not care as much about the story.
2. There are many, many grammar and other writing errors. Not only is "transgender" used as a noun (it's not), but Kristen is said to have given "1000%" on several occasions. Also, this author needs to learn how to use the word "literally." Overall, the book is trying too hard, similar to the first few essays I received from my eleventh grade honors English students when I taught high school.
3. This book spends way too much time 1) introducing itself (5% of the space), 2) telling about the history of Kristen's family (another 15%), and 3) focusing on her time in the SEALs (probably 30-40% of the space). Very little of the book has anything to do with Kristen's struggle, which is what I really wanted to read about.
The moral of the story is this: don't read this book, but if you must, then check it out from the library. At least then it won't be a waste of money.
If I could rating the editing/writing of the book and the story it told separately I would.
This is such an important story for the world to hear and I'm so happy that Kristin chose to share this with the world. She showed tremendous bravery and courage over the course of her lifetime and I am amazed by her. However the writing of this book made it very difficult for me to continue reading. The editing and structure of the book were extremely poor and at times it seemed like the co-author was more interested in getting her own 2 cents in rather than using her knowledge to expand and add to Kristin's story.
Overall I still encourage everyone to read this book so that you can hear Kristin's story, which is truly amazing.
This is such an important story for the world to hear and I'm so happy that Kristin chose to share this with the world. She showed tremendous bravery and courage over the course of her lifetime and I am amazed by her. However the writing of this book made it very difficult for me to continue reading. The editing and structure of the book were extremely poor and at times it seemed like the co-author was more interested in getting her own 2 cents in rather than using her knowledge to expand and add to Kristin's story.
Overall I still encourage everyone to read this book so that you can hear Kristin's story, which is truly amazing.
I liked that this book was about the difficulties of being transgender and coping with that at every stage of life, rather than about difficulties being transgender in the military.
Sadly the book isn't edited or structured at all well so it's pretty hard to get the most out of it.
But the aims and themes of the book were great and I hope someone takes another crack at editing it at some point.
Sadly the book isn't edited or structured at all well so it's pretty hard to get the most out of it.
But the aims and themes of the book were great and I hope someone takes another crack at editing it at some point.
I wish I could give this book 5 stars because Kristin Beck deserves it. She is such an inspiration and an amazing human being for making her story public. I can't even put into words how much it amazes me that she had the bravery to expose herself and her story to the public in such a way.
However, I have to give this book 3 stars because the writing was so unimpressive. And that seriously kills me. This should have been one of the most powerful books that I have ever read, but because of the way the writing conveys Ms. Beck's story, it didn't hit home the way it should have. Her story is one of the most powerful I've heard, but as far as reading the book, it was very disappointing.
All that bitching aside, this is a book that I believe should be required for basically every human, ever. It shows the struggle of coming to terms with your sexuality and the struggle of accepting your sexuality. Honestly, as a cis-straight-female, I can't ever know how difficult it must be, but I do know that it isn't a choice, and Ms. Beck's story shows exactly why it can't be a choice.
Ms. Beck, you get a big Hooyah from me. Thank you for your service, in and out of the SEALS.
However, I have to give this book 3 stars because the writing was so unimpressive. And that seriously kills me. This should have been one of the most powerful books that I have ever read, but because of the way the writing conveys Ms. Beck's story, it didn't hit home the way it should have. Her story is one of the most powerful I've heard, but as far as reading the book, it was very disappointing.
All that bitching aside, this is a book that I believe should be required for basically every human, ever. It shows the struggle of coming to terms with your sexuality and the struggle of accepting your sexuality. Honestly, as a cis-straight-female, I can't ever know how difficult it must be, but I do know that it isn't a choice, and Ms. Beck's story shows exactly why it can't be a choice.
Ms. Beck, you get a big Hooyah from me. Thank you for your service, in and out of the SEALS.
Fascinating and quick read, but poorly written (spelling and grammar). Seems like they rushed the writing to get it out on bookshelves. Also, I was left wanting a tad more details.
I really wanted to like this book. In short, it was a really interesting story that was not very well told. There's no doubt that Kristin is basically the toughest person in America for serving as a SEAL for ~20 years and then coming out as transgender, but that alone won't make a book a good read.
The book was written in the third person, and I assumed for the first half that this was because it was primarily written by Anne…until Anne was introduced in the narrative, still in the third person. It gave the book an almost inauthentic feel, like someone was telling the story from the outside instead of recounting their own experiences. The first half of the book was tough to get through, with a lot of speculation about what other people were thinking and why. A lot of times, things were explained with long passages of "Kris was thinking this" or "Anne was thinking that," and again, the third-person perspective was really clunky in this passages. I would have preferred to read "This is what *I* was doing at the time and what was going through *my* mind," but instead it all felt speculative and disconnected. I expected to read Kristin's account of her time the military, the difficulties of living as a transgender woman, the experience of coming out. Those stories were there, but it never felt like it was being told in her voice, and they were buffered with accounts of meeting the girls at the bar or hanging out on the patio. This may have just been a side effect of telling the story from the third person, and the desire to fill in the gaps with interesting dialog.
Furthermore, there were a lot of odd punctuation errors and unusual grammar structures. I'm willing to chalk some of this up to the Kindle, as I have seen oddities in books converted to digital, but it was too common to ignore or write off as technical difficulties. Other times, two adjacent paragraphs would contain very similar sentences, like the author finished writing for the day and came back in the morning thinking, "Oh right, I wanted to mention this."
Honestly, I feel bad giving this only two stars. I really did want to love this book, and maybe that's why I found it so disappointing. I suspect there may have been a rush to get the book out the door after Kristin did come out, because it really could have been a great one if written and edited with more care.
The book was written in the third person, and I assumed for the first half that this was because it was primarily written by Anne…until Anne was introduced in the narrative, still in the third person. It gave the book an almost inauthentic feel, like someone was telling the story from the outside instead of recounting their own experiences. The first half of the book was tough to get through, with a lot of speculation about what other people were thinking and why. A lot of times, things were explained with long passages of "Kris was thinking this" or "Anne was thinking that," and again, the third-person perspective was really clunky in this passages. I would have preferred to read "This is what *I* was doing at the time and what was going through *my* mind," but instead it all felt speculative and disconnected. I expected to read Kristin's account of her time the military, the difficulties of living as a transgender woman, the experience of coming out. Those stories were there, but it never felt like it was being told in her voice, and they were buffered with accounts of meeting the girls at the bar or hanging out on the patio. This may have just been a side effect of telling the story from the third person, and the desire to fill in the gaps with interesting dialog.
Furthermore, there were a lot of odd punctuation errors and unusual grammar structures. I'm willing to chalk some of this up to the Kindle, as I have seen oddities in books converted to digital, but it was too common to ignore or write off as technical difficulties. Other times, two adjacent paragraphs would contain very similar sentences, like the author finished writing for the day and came back in the morning thinking, "Oh right, I wanted to mention this."
Honestly, I feel bad giving this only two stars. I really did want to love this book, and maybe that's why I found it so disappointing. I suspect there may have been a rush to get the book out the door after Kristin did come out, because it really could have been a great one if written and edited with more care.
A good examination not only of one person's journey as a trans-person, but also a great depiction of PTSD and how it really works. This account is incredibly honest and worth reading. Ms. Beck served this country as a SEAL and continues to serve others by sharing her story in the hopes that it will help others with gender dysphoria.