Have you ever sought personal advice but felt like you couldn’t ask a loved one for it? If you have, so have the many readers of Sugar’s advice column. Sugar is a talented and passionate writer striving to benefit her readers while remaining anonymous behind her fabricated name. Through her advice column, she uses her extensive life experiences that range from leaving who she thought was her soul mate to battling student loans. The novel Tiny Beautiful Things is a compilation of Sugar’s greatest and most influential pieces of advice on the wide variety of questions and pleas for help that her readers address. Throughout her various responses, Sugar reveals her personal hardships and how she can relate to her readers. Such hardships appeal to her credibility and relatability while allowing her to further empathize with her readers and those who call for her help. From the beginning to the end of the novel, the readers may further learn about not only Sugar’s style of writing and how she deals with conflict, but also her personal life and what led her to wear she is now in her life, success, and career. The novel is three hundred sixty-eight pages long with a different letter addressing a different concept or personal struggle of another person. While the novel expresses random pieces of advice drafted by Sugar throughout her writing career, it also poses as advice for the readers of the novel. Yes, the novel does possess advice for very strange and out of the ordinary. But it also addresses more broad concepts that many people can relate to. Throughout the letters, Sugar addresses the power of family, doing what you love, a sense of self, and not settling, among other aspects that reach past the cover of the book and to whom the letter was originally written. Overall, I found this book pretty good. I thought it was very touching and portrayed Sugar in a positive light. I believe Sugar serves as a model for resilience and an example for her readers of how conflicts can be overcome in many different ways no matter the situation. Although I thought this book was very touching and heartfelt, I also think it takes lots of focus, motivation, and a certain type of reader to complete this book. Due to its letter format and the various different topics the letters cover, the book tends to get boring and repetitive as the story progresses. The book also lacks a central plot that is resolved at the end. Rather, it has individual plots and resolutions for each letter that Sugar receives. That being said, I would recommend this book if you are a focused and motivated reader who is interested in the unique format and structure of this novel.
- Kerris A