My Love by Joanne Clancy

Title: My Love

Author: Joanne Clancy

Publisher: Cupid's Arrow Publishing

Published:February 12, 2012

Format: Kindle/e-book

Pages: 95

Source: Received from author in exchange

for an honest review

Read: August 18 2012

In A Few Words: Nice concepts, slightly repetitive
My  Rating:  2 Stars

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Goodreads Synopsis:

 Is there such a thing as love at first sight? Can love be measured?

My Love by Joanne Clancy is a collection of essays about life, love and dating. 

The book discusses different definitions of love, from coming to terms with the reality of love to the importance of giving and generosity and thoughts on the death of a loved one.

The book has ideas on how to woo a woman and how to make a man fall in love. The importance of humour in a dating relationship and how to work on a happy balance while dating is also discussed. 

There is a section on first date tips and internet dating. 

The last part of the book deals with how to realise when a relationship is over and when it is time to move on with your life. There are some helpful tips on how to start over and how to prepare for dating by dating yourself.

My Love is a beautiful collection of love and life experiences

Melissa's Musings:

The overall concept of this book is really nice. It's full of tips for internet dating, first dates, relationships, etc. I see what the author was trying to do with this book, it just didn't work well for me. 

One of the major issues of this book for me was the sequencing. I felt that a lot of the essays were out of place, they just didn't flow together well. I know that essays are generally supposed to be treated as separate entities, but with the subject matter, a lot of the essays seemed to overlap, but they didn't do so in a way that was really cohesive. With a little bit of swapping, I feel that the flow could be improved, which would really enhance the book overall.

In one particular essay, titled "Giving and Generosity" there was a lot of scripture and quotes from the Bible. I found nothing wrong with the content or the quotes themselves, just the frequency of them. In this particular essay scripture was quoted every one or two paragraphs, and as someone who doesn't have that much experience with them this was a little off-putting. I also felt that the frequency of these quotes detracted from the underlying message of this essay.

I did enjoy the fact that this is full of nice ideas for how to improve your relationship, as well few particularly poignant poems that remind the reader that they shouldn't take love for granted. It's passages like these that I wish there were more of because they really stop to make you think.

A lot of the content in this book is common sense, but it is nice to have the reminder of these activities and ideas. 

Along with the thought of a lot of the ideas in the book being common sense, there was an element of repetition that bothered me as I was reading. There were a lot of ideas that were repeated throughout the essays, in exactly the same wording. One in particular stands out because it was mentioned no less than 5 times:

"I''ve had one or two first dates in my time..." or some slight variation thereof.

By the last time of seeing this line I was saying out loud "We know that already! So have most of those of us who are reading this book!"

One great section that I really liked was towards the end where the author is describing potential places for a date in London. She notes several restaurants whose cuisine sounds delicious. And she also makes note of a lot of other places to go go for dates such as some of Britain's public gardens and other more well known attractions.

I had also hoped that there would be more of the author's personal experiences mixed in. I find it easier to connect with books like this if there are personal anecdotes and I feel that may be part of the reason that this book didn't work as well for me.

Overall,  this is a nice book that with a bit of polishing could really be wonderful. I'd recommend it to someone looking for some basic tips on first dates.