The Year of Less by Cait Flanders

Right away judging by this title, I thought this book was going to be about... less. It's called the year of less and the full title even suggests that this book is going to tell you how the author got to this state of ... less. It's not. It so is not about less.

The structure of this book is so that each chapter represents a month in the year starting with July and moving through until we get to the following June. Based on what the title and the description tell the reader, it's supposed to be about this young woman's journey through minimizing her stuff and decluttering her life. Instead, we get a twenty page introduction that tells us how she decided to do this declutter and twelve chapters of the author telling us about everything leading up to that point in her life. We find out how much of a douche bag her birth father is. We find out that she had a serious alcohol problem. We find out that she used shopping and spending as a way to cover up what she felt was inadequate about herself. And she goes on about the last two things so much that by the end of the book you want to scream "I GET IT!!! YOU HAD A PROBLEM!!!"

While the stories were pretty well written, this book was a memoir. It was not an instructional book in how one person cleaned up her life and minimized her belongings. It did not tell you the way she did anything she did. It simply tells you why. I gave this book two stars on Goodreads because I picked it up thinking I would have something to help me clean up my life. It didn't. What it did do was made me feel a little bit better about myself at the expense of the author, but it also annoyed me. I was ready for it to be done and over with much much sooner than it was, that's for sure.

Make sure you guys let me know if you have any questions or feel free to give me suggestions if you have a book you think I'd like!

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