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Author Trina McNeilly has been blogging for nearly a decade. While she spent her days sharing beauty, looking for lovely things, and redecorating her childhood home, her parents' unexpected divorce shattered her ideals of "home."
Through this journey, Trina learned that beauty is not beyond the laundry pile, chipped paint, dirty dishes, broken table or broken life. It's right in the center of it. Trina found that God IS beauty. And that he invites us to look, discover, uncover and find because when we find beauty, we find God.
In LA LA LOVELY, Trina shares stories and inspiration from her journey of finding, and being found, by beauty. You will find deep matters of the heart along with practical pointers on things like decorating your home, finding your style, and creating beautiful spaces. Each chapter offers essays, beautiful photographs, design tips, and practical advice for creating a place of beauty and belonging no matter where you live or what you're going through.
(400 pages)
This was very different from what I thought it was going to be.
I was expecting a how-to book, a guide to slowing down and finding the beauty all around me. I thought it would have inspirational quotes, beautiful prose, pictures of lovely items, etc.
It had some of all of those things, but to a much lesser extent. The majority of the book is actually made up of McNeilly's reminisces about her own life and lessons she's learned from personal experience. On one level, it's interesting–and some of her mini essays have points that I think are important, like learning to not miss happiness by stressing about small things.
But on another level, it's kind of boring. I'm not a mother. I don't have a house. I don't follow her blog. I feel sorry for her that she had such a hard time with her grandfather and grandmother dying, plus her parents getting divorced, all within a couple years of each other, but lots of people have sad stories. I'm not really any more interested in hers than I would be in anyone else's.
The truth is that if someone wants to share lots of details about their life, from their childhood to adulthood, I need to either be already invested in them or they need to make their stories directly applicable to my own life in some way or other. McNeilly's stories didn't really meet either of those criteria, so I wound up flipping through the book by the end. If you're in a situation more similar to hers, or you follow your blog, then you might find the book more interesting than I did.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
This was very different from what I thought it was going to be.
I was expecting a how-to book, a guide to slowing down and finding the beauty all around me. I thought it would have inspirational quotes, beautiful prose, pictures of lovely items, etc.
It had some of all of those things, but to a much lesser extent. The majority of the book is actually made up of McNeilly's reminisces about her own life and lessons she's learned from personal experience. On one level, it's interesting–and some of her mini essays have points that I think are important, like learning to not miss happiness by stressing about small things.
But on another level, it's kind of boring. I'm not a mother. I don't have a house. I don't follow her blog. I feel sorry for her that she had such a hard time with her grandfather and grandmother dying, plus her parents getting divorced, all within a couple years of each other, but lots of people have sad stories. I'm not really any more interested in hers than I would be in anyone else's.
The truth is that if someone wants to share lots of details about their life, from their childhood to adulthood, I need to either be already invested in them or they need to make their stories directly applicable to my own life in some way or other. McNeilly's stories didn't really meet either of those criteria, so I wound up flipping through the book by the end. If you're in a situation more similar to hers, or you follow your blog, then you might find the book more interesting than I did.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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