After I finished reading A Time To Kill by John Grisham, I ran into another reading funk. I found out during my reading funk that I needed to stop trying to read a particular genre. I needed to find a story that sounded interesting. By doing this, I bought some books in a genre that I have not read before, nonfiction. I tell you this because that is how I stumbled upon The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley.
I had just finished Talking To Strangers: What We Should Know About The People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell and moved on to what I thought would be my next read, Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer. I was almost halfway through the book, and I just had to stop. The author's writing style was not for me. I was forcing myself to read the book instead of enjoying it. I had bought Krakauer's other book, Into Thin Air, from Barnes & Noble and decided to take it back.
After returning the book, I decided to roam the store. On a table near the front of the store was Barnes & Noble's Monthly Fiction Pick, The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley. I decided to read what it was about:
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The story of a solitary green notebook that brings together six strangers and leads to unexpected friendship, and even love.
Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with one another. But what if they were? And so he writes—in a plain, green journal—the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves—and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica's Café.
The Authenticity Project's cast of characters—including Hazard, the charming addict who makes a vow to get sober; Alice, the fabulous mommy Instagrammer whose real life is a lot less perfect than it looks online; and their other new friends—is by turns quirky and funny, heartbreakingly sad and painfully true-to-life. It's a story about being brave and putting your real self forward—and finding out that it's not as scary as it seems. In fact, it looks a lot like happiness.
The Authenticity Project is just the tonic for our times that readers are clamoring for—and one they will take to their hearts and read with unabashed pleasure.
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As the synopsis tells us, this book follows six people who found The Authenticity Project. While that is true, we don't meet all six until about 75% of the way through the book. I would say that the book mainly focuses on four people. They are the main characters. Each chapter is told from the point-of-view of one of the characters. I found myself getting caught up in each character's story and looking forward to each of their chapters. I never felt like the story was dragging; it was always moving forward and at a good pace.
The author could have easily expanded on parts of the story, but she didn't. Does that take away from the story? Not at all. That is one reason why the book never felt like it was dragging. Also, most of the chapters are only four or five pages. If you are like me, having short chapters makes it so easy and convenient to say, "I'll just read one more chapter." Then a few minutes later, "Just one more chapter."
When I talk about books, I feel like I also need to tell you if there is anything that I didn't like. There are a couple of things that I didn't like.
Some of the story is predictable. In the synopsis, it says, "The story of a solitary green notebook that brings together six strangers and leads to unexpected friendship, and even love." I knew who was going to fall in love about 25% of the way through the book. It wasn't tough to figure out. Predictable really.
I do also wish that more people would have gotten ahold of the green notebook. Every person who reads the green notebook becomes a main character in the story. Also, of the six people who read the book, five know at least one person who wrote in the book. I don't want to say how, but I wish that the people would have been more random. I wish that the notebook would have been left in more random parts of the city.
As for the negatives, that is it.
The author added a few things at the end of the book that I didn't see coming. They surprised me. I finished this book one night while my wife was sleeping, and I was afraid that I would wake her up by gasping at a couple of events at the end of the book.
Would I reread this book? Probably not. Do I regret reading it? Nope.
This book is kind of like a Hallmark movie. You know how most of the story will go, but getting from point a to point b is fun. You aren't 100% sure what will happened in-between those points. Would I recommend this book to people? Yes. I am a slow reader, but I read this book in under a week, which is fast for me.
Overall I would give this book 3.75 Stars out of 5.0.
On to my next read.
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