Official Review: Your success Genie by Sue Hines

[RebekaV]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Your Success Genie" by Sue Hines.]

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Your Success Genie by Susan Hines is non-fiction book that would best fit the self-help category. However, it does not do a very good job on the 'help' part.

The main theme of the book is how people can be classified into 9 personality types that are based on the following motivational qualities: Intuition, Endurance, Honour, Courage, Enchantment, Optimism, Ingenuity, Faith and Consciousness. According to the book each of us has one main Genie with one of these motivational qualities which can help us to live our lives more successfully. The Genies are then further classified into Mind, Heart, and Spirit Genies that expand on each motivational quality.

The Genies are all sufficiently explained in the book and you have the option to find out what your own Genie is by going online and taking the test at Susan Hines' website. This was the first thing that I did not really appreciate about the book - I think it would be better if the quiz would be included in it, rather than having to go online for it. After reading the book I was also sure that my Genie was different from the one I got as my test result - this leaves me a bit annoyed and confused about the quiz.

The book started really well - it had heaps of cool quotes from well-known people and the writing style wasn't dry and formal, despite the fact that it is a non-fiction book. I really liked this aspect as what turns me off a lot of the times with non-fiction books is their rather dry writing style. It gives a fair bit of fresh insight into personality types, but it is not anything fundamentally new - which the author actually acknowledges, so the reader knows beforehand. There is some marketing bla bla in the book, but it does not reach an annoying level and there is no sugar-coating or 'miracle solutions'. You know what you get, the author tells you fair and square. I really appreciated this aspect of the book - not many self-help books actually say that your life will not necessarily be solved after reading them...

There are some serious drawbacks though. The major one being is that even though the author does explain all you have to know about the Genies she doesn't actually tell you how to use them. Not once does she mention what you should do to reconnect with your basic motivation. This frustrated me a great deal because the descriptions of the Genies are quite interesting and accurate, but now that I know which one is mine, how do I exactly connect with it? The author left this issue unaddressed, to my great disappointment.

There are some other, smaller negative aspects as well. Susan Hines raises questions that she leaves unanswered (for example why do we procrastinate), leaving the reader hanging. I also don't feel that having people classified as possessing only 1 Genie is not enough, I found 3 that I felt applied to me. There were also spelling mistakes in the book - not too annoying, but frequent enough to notice.

Overall, I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. It did have a few very interesting things to say (I really enjoyed learning about how big companies influence people with their ads), but it wasn't a fully engaging book. It did not keep me glued to the pages wanting to find out more and there were some parts where I was definitely bored. It is well-written and for people who aren't familiar with the self-help section of their bookstores it might be a really interesting read, but for me it lacked enough new information to be truly enjoyable and left too many questions unanswered to be satisfying.

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[Kappy]

Good, thorough review. I don't think that putting labels ("personality types") on people is helpful, so this book is not for me.