The Gospel of Wellness

 

 I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care

Author: Rina Raphael 

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Release Date: 9.20.22

Publisher’s Summary 

Journalist Rina Raphael looks at the explosion of the wellness industry: how it stems from legitimate complaints, how seductive marketing targets hopeful consumers–and why women are opening up their wallets like never before.

Wellness promises women the one thing they desperately desire: control.

Women are pursuing their health like never before. Whether it’s juicing, biohacking, clutching crystals, or sipping collagen, today there is something for everyone, as the wellness industry has grown from modest roots into a $4.4 trillion entity and a full-blown movement promising health and vitality in the most fashionable package. But why suddenly are we all feeling so unwell?

The truth is that deep within the underbelly of self-care—hidden beneath layers of clever marketing—wellness beckons with a far stronger, more seductive message than health alone. It promises women the one thing they desperately desire: control.

Vividly told and deeply reported, The Gospel of Wellness reveals how this obsession is a direct result of women feeling dismissed, mistreated, and overburdened. Women are told they can manage the chaos ruling their life by following a laid-out plan: eat right, exercise, meditate, then buy or do all this stuff. And while wellness may have sprung from good intentions, we are now relentlessly flooded with exploitative offerings, questionable ideas, and a mounting pressure to stay devoted to the divine doctrine of wellness. What happens when the cure becomes as bad as the disease?

With a critical eye, humor, and empathy, wellness industry journalist Rina Raphael examines how women have been led down a kale-covered path promising nothing short of salvation. She knows: Raphael was once a disciple herself—trying everything from “clean eating” to electric shock workouts—until her own awakening to the troubling consequences. Balancing the good with the bad, The Gospel of Wellness is a clear-eyed exploration of what wellness can actually offer us, knocking down the false idols and commandments that have taken hold and ultimately showing how we might shape a better future for the movement—and for our well-being.

My Review

Wellness is not just a personal goal, it's a hyper-capitalistic, competitive industry. Companies and influencers are selling their goods, and consumers are trying it all, attempting to maximize their health or just trying to feel better. Rina Raphael points out endless inconsistencies, exploitations, and unequal access. She also provides detailed observations of the constant onslaught of products, treatments, and activities marketed to us every single minute of the day. Supported with cited research and a splash of personal insight, her work expands beyond the dreamy face cream cover to include sections on gyms, nutrition, medical care, New-Age spiritualism, and biohacking.

I found "The Gospel of Wellness" to be the perfect mashup of Leigh Stein's "Self Care" and Amanda Montell's "Cultish" and have added it to my Best Books of 2022 list. 

Blog Tour: The Witches of Moonshyne Manor

 

 I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Witches of Moonshyne Manor

Author: Bianca Marais 

Publisher: MIRA

Release Date: 8.23.22

Publisher’s Summary 

A coven of modern-day witches. A magical heist-gone-wrong. A looming threat.

Five octogenarian witches gather as an angry mob threatens to demolish Moonshyne Manor. All eyes turn to the witch in charge, Queenie, who confesses they’ve fallen far behind on their mortgage payments. Still, there’s hope, since the imminent return of Ruby—one of the sisterhood who’s been gone for thirty-three years—will surely be their salvation.

But the mob is only the start of their troubles. One man is hellbent on avenging his family for the theft of a legacy he claims was rightfully his. In an act of desperation, Queenie makes a bargain with an evil far more powerful than anything they’ve ever faced. Then things take a turn for the worse when Ruby’s homecoming reveals a seemingly insurmountable obstacle instead of the solution to all their problems.

The witches are determined to save their home and themselves, but their aging powers are no match for increasingly malicious threats. Thankfully, they get a bit of help from Persephone, a feisty TikToker eager to smash the patriarchy. As the deadline to save the manor approaches, fractures among the sisterhood are revealed, and long-held secrets are exposed, culminating in a fiery confrontation with their enemies.

Funny, tender and uplifting, the novel explores the formidable power that can be discovered in aging, found family and unlikely friendships. Marais’ clever prose offers as much laughter as insight, delving deeply into feminism, identity and power dynamics while stirring up intrigue and drama through secrets, lies and sex. Heartbreaking and heart-mending, it will make you grateful for the amazing women in your life.

My Review

Despite buying their *spirits* from the Moonshyne Manor distillery, the men in town want to tear down the manor, clear the land, and build a temple to toxic masculinity--a type of "men only" theme park. Faced with eviction from their beloved home, the coven of five witches struggle to find a solution to their dilemma by consulting the Moonshyne Manor Grimoire and receiving a little help from local teen Persephone and her Italian greyhound Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

Persephone stole the show for me. I love that the main 5 witches are all in their 80s, but feisty and tech-savvy Persephone kept everything fresh, modern, and fun. Some of the best lines in the book were generation gap cluelessness and "who's teaching who" type moments between Persephone and Queenie. 

Overall this book is a fun story of friendship and sisterhood, but it should not be written off as a fluffy, nonsensical read. In addition to feminist witches, The Witches of Moonshyne Manor puts identity and sexuality at the forefront with LGBTQ+ and sex-positive storylines. 

tender gravity

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: tender gravity 

Author: Marybeth Holleman

Publisher: Boreal Books

Release Date: 8.9.22

Publisher’s Summary 

tender gravity charts Marybeth Holleman's quest for relationship to the more-than-human world, navigating her childhood in North Carolina to her life in Alaska, with deep time in remote land and seascapes. Always the focus is on what can be found by attention to the world beyond her own human skin, what can be found there as she negotiates loss--the loss of beloved places, wild beings, her younger brother. "do not think," she says to her mother, "that i love a bear more than my brother. / think instead that i cannot distinguish / the variations in / the beat of a heart." Inevitably, solace is found in the wild world: "step back toward that joy-sap rising, step back / into the only world that is." In a narrative arc of seeking, falling, and finding, we hear in Holleman's exquisitely attentive immersion clear reverberations of Mary Oliver, of Linda Hogan, of Walt Whitman. These poems of grief and celebration pulse in and out, reaching to the familiar moon and out to orphan stars of distant galaxies, then pull close to a small brown seabird and an on-the-knees view of a tiny bog plant.

My Review

I enjoyed these vignettes of nature and glimpses into the author's journeys, both physical and emotional. Holleman transports readers into the beautiful wilderness to expose the breakdown of ecosystems (altered migration patterns of walruses and the relocation of birds affected by oil spills) and then sweeps our eyes up to the wonder of the stars and comets, before pulling us close to her as she grieves her brother's murder. My favorite section is from "In the Garden, Early May"

Who is to say how a day’s best spent? At the end of a life, what remains? A few scattered pages— some of them read— maybe one bright phrase that clings to the world immortal— like the seeds of birch so many and small, yet each may grow into a tree taller than a library, and as useful. 

Marybeth Holleman is author of The Heart of the Sound, coauthor of Among Wolves, and coeditor Crosscurrents North, among others. Pushcart Prize nominee and Siskiyou Prize finalist, she’s published in venues including Orion, The Guardian, Christian Science Monitor, Sierra, and North American Review. She taught women’s studies and creative writing at University of Alaska and held artist residencies at Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook, and Denali National Park. Raised in North Carolina’s Smokies, she transplanted to Alaska’s Chugach Mountains after falling head over heels for Prince William Sound two years before the oil spill. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska. 

Doll Apollo

  I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Doll Apollo

Author: Melissa Ginsburg

Publisher: LSU Press

Release Date: 8.3.22

Publisher’s Summary 

With lush imagery and surprising syntactical turns, the poems in Doll Apollo merge mythology with close attention to the patterns, colors, and contours of the material world. Through the figure of the paper doll, the hoax conspiracy surrounding the Apollo moon landing, and lyrics embedded with violence and beauty, Melissa Ginsburg’s feminist ecopoetics weaves the domestic and celestial into considerations of female identity, desire, spiritual yearning, and doubt. Throughout, Doll Apollo remains rooted in scenery and music, as Ginsburg embraces her subjects with humor and verbal and formal play.

My Review

I enjoyed this collection, especially

Song of the Shred
The ink bled through and I easy tore.
How it goes,
Your ugliest mistake was done, you to yourself,
Your weakness on display
Rends the heart of the stain.

Reluctant Immortals

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Reluctant Immortals 

Author: Gwendolyn Kiste

Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press

Release Date: 8.23.22

Publisher’s Summary 

For fans of Mexican Gothic, from three-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author Gwendolyn Kiste comes a novel inspired by the untold stories of forgotten women in classic literature--from Lucy Westenra, a victim of Stoker’s Dracula, and Bertha Mason, from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre--as they band together to combat the toxic men bent on destroying their lives, set against the backdrop of the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, 1967.

Reluctant Immortals is a historical horror novel that looks at two men of classic literature, Dracula and Mr. Rochester, and the two women who survived them, Bertha and Lucy, who are now undead immortals residing in Los Angeles in 1967 when Dracula and Rochester make a shocking return in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.

Combining elements of historical and gothic fiction with a modern perspective, in a tale of love and betrayal and coercion, Reluctant Immortals is the lyrical and harrowing journey of two women from classic literature as they bravely claim their own destiny in a man’s world.

My Review

I can always visualize a story as I read it, but this one reads like a true horror film. The near-constant scenery/setting changes as the main characters run from their nemeses keeps tensions high and rather than a singular climax, the multiple altercation/climaxes raise more questions than answers. Feminist retellings of classics are all the rage in recent years and while this novel focuses on Lucy Westenra from "Dracula" and Bertha Mason from "Jane Eyre," I felt they both fell flat as revived characters. They are far from the fierce and powerful women but this campy spin might be enjoyed by readers looking for an upcoming "spooky" read.