REVIEW: COMFORT LIVING

Comfort Living:  A Back-to-Basics Guide To a More Balanced Lifestyle

77 pages

This book was sent to me by the publisher, and I have to be honest here, this will not be a glowing review.

I was pretty excited when I was approached to review this book as books on how to make my life more pleasurable is always a big hit around here.  And I am a pretty big clutter hound, but hate it.  The only room in my house that is always clutter free is my living room, which is the first room you see when you walk into our house.  Otherwise, everywhere else there are toys, books (duh!), papers stacked everywhere... you get the picture.  So, I was actually looking for some real tips from this one.

Here was the number one first impression that immediately put me off, but I was mindful not to let it taint the overall opinion I have of this book.  The photography.  It is just not very good, okay I'm sorry to say it is pretty poor for a book like this.  At first it was the quality of the image that was odd, I showed it to my husband saying, "Doesn't this look like it is a bad copy off of someones printer?"  He had to agree.  Even the author's photo on the back is very poor quality.  Okay, so the pics were bad quality, but then it got even worse, when I really looked  at the photos I quickly realized that even the photography itself is just not good.  The composition is terrible, and for a book like this photos are really needed to get the "picture" so to speak of what the end result of her tips are. The photos on the cover of the book and the journal are GEORGOUS, so it is a bit misleading. 

Her tips are pretty good, I like the ones of entering your house and then each room and try to see if from an outsiders eyes, and try to create a cozy feel when you enter a space.  But the "campfire" idea just seemed odd, as in creating a "campfire" in each room with objects you love and add warmth and comfort to a space. 

Then there's the journal that came along with it, that you can purchase for an additional $7.95.  This thing is so small I almost laughed out loud.  I just didn't get it.  It is about the size of a standard sized cheque book, I'm not even kidding.  With teeny tiny print, and my daughter was looking through it and found that half of the book was upside down, which had us really confused.  But then she noticed that on the back right above the HUGE bar code is actually another front cover, so you can flip it over and use it both ways for two different catagories.  But the problem with that is the bar code takes up almost half of the back/front cover so it just looks weird and doesn't feel right. 

I always feel terrible when I have to review a book I did not enjoy, but honestly I would not have purchased this book if I saw it in a book store.  And that is why I feel like I need to be honest because if you order it online you may be surprised at the quality of it. 

RATING:  0.5/5