Closer to Love
Vex King
Bluebird Books for Life
Review: Chantel Erfort
Ordinarily I would avoid anything even vaguely related to catchphrases like “self-love”, let alone a book written by someone described as a “self-love writer” who “rose to fame on Instagram”.
Thankfully I went against my instincts and gave Closer to Love a chance. Subtitled “How to attract the right relationships and deepen your connections”, I found this book to be just the correct balance between an exploration of theoretical psychology concepts such as attachment theory, Eastern and Western philosophies and more contemporary, popular concepts such as mindfulness and self-mastery.
I spent hours with this book, often finding it difficult to put down – and the number of stickies and Post-it notes still stuck to its pages are testament to this.
Structured around three parts – The Self; Together; and Love – the book delves into the role each of us plays in our own happiness and ability to create connections with others before expanding its scope into how to build relationships and ultimately, what love is and what it looks like when it is authentic and unconditional.
In addition to serving up some real food for thought, this book also includes a good dose of academic research into relationship and relationship theory as well as practical self-exploration exercises and examples of the writer’s personal experience.
Also very useful are the lists of key insights at the end of each chapter and details of nearly 50 reference texts.
I found this book to be accessible and easy to read without ever feeling like the writer was spoon-feeding me. The numbered lists and subtitled sections also make information easier to digest and retain, particularly some of the more complex, theoretical concepts.
Don’t be mistaken that this book has been written as a self-help manual for single people wanting to learn how to attract the “perfect” partner.
Between its covers is valuable information on how to get to know and understand yourself better, how to take responsibility for your own happiness and thereby step into relationships as a more whole and self-aware person rather than looking for happiness externally.
