OnlineBookClub.org

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "How to Grow Up Without" by Anne Elizabeth Nixon.]

How to Grow Up Without Screwing It Up by Anne Elizabeth Nixon is a self-help book for teens and young adults that focuses on personal and career development. She covers topic ranging from romantic relationships to the college-versus-trade-school debate to self-esteem. Nixon uses evidence from her own life to explain the different jobs available to young people without a college education, and she encourages her readers to consider all of their options before jumping into a situation. This advice applies to marriage, college, and careers.

I enjoyed the encouraging tone the author maintained throughout the book. She truly wants to see young people succeed, and this is obvious in her writing. I also liked that she focused on how many options people have, not on telling her reader which option to choose. Although most of the book covers career choices, I actually felt that her advice about personal development would be helpful to more people than her more specialized career advice.

While I liked her ideas, the book itself included a variety of grammatical and organizational issues that I can't overlook. The author openly states that she has mixed font types and colors and has changed the spacing and indentation of paragraphs throughout the book in order to keep the reader alert. While the multiple font colors were sometimes useful to direct my attention towards important points, the randomly double-spaced paragraphs and lack of indentation in places was simply distracting.

In addition, this book clearly lacks professional editing. There are multiple grammatical errors on almost every page. This makes it feel like the author is being careless, which reduces her trustworthiness. I got this same sense from the organization (or lack thereof) in the book. The chapters about various careers were randomly interspersed between chapters about romantic relationships, self-esteem, happiness, and other personal development topics. Even within the single chapter on cars, the author spent multiple pages just listing things she knew about cars instead of including information that would help someone decide if they wanted to work in a job involving cars. I think an editor could help remove these tangents and fix the grammatical issues.

Overall, I would give this book 2 out of 4 stars. The author's tone is encouraging, and she gives good advice about personal success, but her grammar and organization are lacking. I would recommend this book to young people who want general advice for life but not to readers looking for an organized overview of all the career paths available to them.

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How to Grow Up Without
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Thank you for your honest review. I guess the professional editing would have helped a lot. A lot of young people do need advice for life.

Professional editing is such a huge problem for a lot of books. And even though I buy the idea that different fonts and colours can keep readers alert, there's an art to it. Thanks for this very informative review.

Well, I admire the author for trying to switch things up in order to keep your attention. However, if this is a book that you actually want to read and think will be helpful, I'm not sure that's necessary. I wish this had been around many years ago, but it's a bit too late for me. Thanks for the review, though.

I imagine a professional editor might have been sceptical about the idea of using different fonts and colours to keep the reader alert!

I would have loved to have a book like this when I was in my last few years of high school. I think it would have helped me make more appropriate choices and helped me choose my final college degree the first time instead of on the third time around. The lack of professional editing does make me question the validity though. Great review!

The author offers wise advise for people at this stage of life. Hopefully, the author will take your advice about the formatting, since this is a powerful perspective for young people to consider. Thanks for your honest review!

The author seems to genuinely want to help young adults make good decisions which is very admirable, since wise choices from a young age can lead to a more progressive and fulfilling life in the future. I'm sure another round of editing would enhance the quality of the book. Thank you for the great review.

I can't wait to read this book, it's all about the young teenage life and how to live, it's really gonna help the young live well, without screwing things up in their life

As a teenager I did need help on such topics. I think this book is going to be very helpful to teenagers and young adults as the age is a very confusing time and it is hard to make decisions. Thanks for the wonderful review.

They say it takes a village and this book is proof that some of us are doing our part to help our children succeed. This was a great review, it is a shame about the editing and organizational errors. I think I will still read it though as you seem to like it very much! Thanks for the great review I loved it!

As a parent of a teenager, the concept of this book sounds great, but as the parent of a teenager who isn't a strong reader, the idea of the lack of truly professional editing means my child would just look at the book and decide it was too hard to read. And I wouldn't be able argue.

Although the book is designed for young readers, I believe the author's encouraging tone could be helpful at any time. Too bad that the editing and the organized structure lacks. Thank you for your honest review!

Inspirational books aren't my favourite unless a book provides more than mare self-help tips. This one seems interesting. Thanks for the review.

When you state the the author explained her writing style it came out to me that she just wanted to change the way these thpes of books are written. Its a pity that the book does not seem to be professionally editted. Thank you for a lovely review.