"Let's Be Real," by Natasha Bure

Audience: Young Adult

Genre: Nonfiction

Overall Content Rating: Clean

Overall Review

Natasha Bure's "Let's Be Real" is a book that takes on many different forms. Biography, self-help book, and encouragement manual all in one, she gives snippets of her life as well as giving her readers motivation to continue on with theirs, but not in the same way as before. In Chapter One, she establishes how to find who you are—and not just address who you think you are. From this, she builds many other ideas of what to do to really live out the book's tagline: "living life as an open and honest you."

This book approaches life from a Christian point-of-view, so for those of you who aren't looking for that: beware. However, for those of you who are, I have a spectacular book for you. This book is perfect for teens and adults, but to be more specific, it's primarily for young women who are in that stage of life where they aren't sure who they are and what they want to be.

Each chapter of this book includes little mini-sections that are formatted to really pop out at you. Things like quotes from the book, mini-takeaways, next steps, and more for her readers to discover, allowing them to not just follow her main words, but also get some of their own takeaways—from themselves! With many journaling prompts throughout the book, she allows you to really take her words for a ride and make new discoveries all on your own.

This is one book that I honestly bought for myself when I was around thirteen and here I am, five years later and I'm only just now reading it for the first time. And do I regret getting it? Absolutely not. Do I regret not reading it sooner? One hundred percent.

This book is one that has the ability to change lives for the better, and while I didn't get as much out of it as I could, a lot of that was because I was analyzing instead of engaging. My next goal is to reread this while taking notes to really take what Bure put on the table.

This is another important topic that I need to address with this book: Don't read it expecting to just get something out of it regardless. While you may be able to see and understand what she's trying to tell you, you aren't going to be able to really put it to use (at least, not as well as you could) unless you follow her step-by-step as she walks you through what to focus on and what to really work on changing in your life.

Overall, I think this is a great book of encouragement for Christians to be who God made them to be and ultimately, be empowered to encourage others to do the same.