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traci_otte 's review for:
Hidden Treasures
by Jessica Oliver, Ken Hartley, Paddi Newlin
This is a novelized FlyLady self-help book with poor formatting. I have the ebook version. The formatting is practically non-existent. There are no page breaks in any of the introductory information (such as the title/author information on one page, copyright/disclaimer on another, and the start of the book on another), and there are no page breaks between chapters. The chapter number and title are bold, but that's it. At the end of the book, there's not even a line break between the last sentence and "The authors" (which is in normal typeface). The table of contents feature does work, fortunately.
Now to the content of the book. I borrowed it through Kindle Unlimited because it mentioned FlyLady (Marla Cilley), who I am very familiar with from years ago. I don't know if I read her book, Sink Reflections, that is heavily referred to in this book, but I did read lots on her website, got her e-mails for a long time, started a Control Journal, and even bought some of her products (I still have a FlyLady magnet on my fridge). I was curious how she would be interwoven into a novel.
This book feels like a testimonial within a testimonial (there's a diary that our protagonist is reading that takes up so much of the book I feel I know the diary-writer, Gina, better than the protagonist, Courtney) with another semi-testimonial interwoven in the diary and one mentioned near the end. It is heavily laden with FlyLady terminology and direct lines from the e-mails and book. It sounded way more like a FlyLady work than a novel mentioning some of the FlyLady tools in the narrative.
Midway through the book, I looked at the authors because I was starting to get offended on the FlyLady's behalf. It seemed the book was trying to capitalize on her work, and that didn't sit right with me. Paddi Newlin is the FlyLady's sister, and Jessica Oliver is Paddi's daughter (so the FlyLady's niece). That made me feel a little better, as I'm assuming (hoping) that they got the FlyLady's permission to use that much of her work in this novel.
The third author is "K. R. Hartley," or Ken Hartley. This is part of Ken's Amazon author profile: "He is a Certified Speaker, Trainer, and Coach with The John Maxwell Team as well as an Advanced Certified Human Behavior Consultant with Personality Insights and Dr. Robert Rohm." Hartley's profile goes on to list his inspirational speaker experiences and says, "He loves to encourage and challenge people to overcome limiting obstacles and step into their God-given destinies."
That's when it hit me: This is an inspirational "speech" in the guise of a novel. I suppose that shouldn't bother me, but I didn't get that feeling from the book's description. Reading the description again now, I see it, and the Best Sellers Rank in the Amazon listing has it in Self-Help as well as in Family Life Fiction. I'm sure it's fine for a lot of people (especially those who haven't heard of FlyLady and will likely look her up after reading this book), but for those of us wanting to read to escape, Hidden Treasures almost felt like a lecture, or (at the very least) an encouragement to get up and do a 15 minute decluttering or cleaning.
About the story itself, it was interesting. I always like reading testimonials, but not usually a few hundred pages of them. There were some continuity errors (for example, Gina's son Ethan is referred to as Nate a number of times and Nathan once, and Courtney's mother-in-law's visit seemed to jump a week or more). Also, there were some proofreading errors, but not so many that it threw me out of the story.
I will say that the last few chapters were good, and the story was wrapped up nicely. That redeemed the book some in my eyes, but I still was left with a bit of restlessness instead of enjoyment that I usually have after reading a novel. If I wanted a self-help book, I would have sought out a self-help book.
Now to the content of the book. I borrowed it through Kindle Unlimited because it mentioned FlyLady (Marla Cilley), who I am very familiar with from years ago. I don't know if I read her book, Sink Reflections, that is heavily referred to in this book, but I did read lots on her website, got her e-mails for a long time, started a Control Journal, and even bought some of her products (I still have a FlyLady magnet on my fridge). I was curious how she would be interwoven into a novel.
This book feels like a testimonial within a testimonial (there's a diary that our protagonist is reading that takes up so much of the book I feel I know the diary-writer, Gina, better than the protagonist, Courtney) with another semi-testimonial interwoven in the diary and one mentioned near the end. It is heavily laden with FlyLady terminology and direct lines from the e-mails and book. It sounded way more like a FlyLady work than a novel mentioning some of the FlyLady tools in the narrative.
Midway through the book, I looked at the authors because I was starting to get offended on the FlyLady's behalf. It seemed the book was trying to capitalize on her work, and that didn't sit right with me. Paddi Newlin is the FlyLady's sister, and Jessica Oliver is Paddi's daughter (so the FlyLady's niece). That made me feel a little better, as I'm assuming (hoping) that they got the FlyLady's permission to use that much of her work in this novel.
The third author is "K. R. Hartley," or Ken Hartley. This is part of Ken's Amazon author profile: "He is a Certified Speaker, Trainer, and Coach with The John Maxwell Team as well as an Advanced Certified Human Behavior Consultant with Personality Insights and Dr. Robert Rohm." Hartley's profile goes on to list his inspirational speaker experiences and says, "He loves to encourage and challenge people to overcome limiting obstacles and step into their God-given destinies."
That's when it hit me: This is an inspirational "speech" in the guise of a novel. I suppose that shouldn't bother me, but I didn't get that feeling from the book's description. Reading the description again now, I see it, and the Best Sellers Rank in the Amazon listing has it in Self-Help as well as in Family Life Fiction. I'm sure it's fine for a lot of people (especially those who haven't heard of FlyLady and will likely look her up after reading this book), but for those of us wanting to read to escape, Hidden Treasures almost felt like a lecture, or (at the very least) an encouragement to get up and do a 15 minute decluttering or cleaning.
About the story itself, it was interesting. I always like reading testimonials, but not usually a few hundred pages of them. There were some continuity errors (for example, Gina's son Ethan is referred to as Nate a number of times and Nathan once, and Courtney's mother-in-law's visit seemed to jump a week or more). Also, there were some proofreading errors, but not so many that it threw me out of the story.
I will say that the last few chapters were good, and the story was wrapped up nicely. That redeemed the book some in my eyes, but I still was left with a bit of restlessness instead of enjoyment that I usually have after reading a novel. If I wanted a self-help book, I would have sought out a self-help book.