The latest youtuber/blogger to release a book is Tanya Burr – I didn’t have any intentions on buying the book, but I liked the front cover so I did – that’s not really the best reason, but none the less I dived into reading it as soon as it arrived as I’d just finished Girl Online from Zoella (Girl Online review here). This book is very similarly targeted to a younger audience as Girl Online, which I wasn’t really expecting, whilst the cover is girly, it is quite grown up and classy at the same time, the design of the book is also much more grown up.
I’m left somewhat confused as to what Love Tanya is trying to be. It’s somewhat of an autobiography, although is very brief and vague (only around 50 pages), I’ve been watching Tanya Burr’s videos for at least 3 years – maybe more, and I didn’t feel like there was much there which I didn’t already know. The autobiography is sprinkled with family photos, however none of them are captioned, so you can’t quite work out who people are in the pictures other than herself and her parents.
Sections that follow include skin care, make up, fashion, self-confidence, love. Each section talks about her experiences, contains top tips, product recommendations etc in places I found these helpful, but largely I could have guessed what products she was going to mention from watching her. Now I guess that’s a good thing – the products she recommends on youtube followed suit into the book, but I didn’t see anything that I hadn’t heard of previously. I never have read a book like this before, and I don’t felt like I came away really learning anything new, maybe it’s because I’ve been reading blogs and watching youtube for 5 years, but I was just left feeling disappointed.
One of the most bizarre things for me was the section of her top 10 favourite pieces of fashion that she owns, there is a short description on each, but there’s no pictures. Having watched Tanya’s videos I know what some of these items she’s describing are, but the majority I don’t! If I started telling you about a beautiful red dress I have, and how much I love it and then didn’t include any pictures of it, you’d all think I was going insane.
One of the things (other than the front cover) that made me want to have a look was the baking chapter, which I was left a bit disappointed by, there was nothing ‘new’ or out of the ordinary in this section – and whilst yes things did look tasty – I was expecting to see more than a recipe for triple chocolate cookies. But at the same time, I’m not sure if I’m expecting too much considering she’s not a professional cook/baker.
The thing that annoyed me most were the pages and pages which are included to fill in your own – for example ’favourite school memories’ and ‘things that make you happy’ – I as a 25 year old am not planning on sitting down and filling this all in, if I did I wouldn’t come back to read this again. These pages just felt like they were just ‘making up the numbers’ to me – making the book be the size that warrants a £12.99 price tag.
The book is beautifully designed, they have clearly have time that has been well spent on photography and photoshoots for each chapter, although there are often large gaps and the text is quite large – which makes me wonder how big of a book this would actually be if the fonts we’re a normal size and gaps were removed, and those pesky list pages. The book was largely written in short sentences Therefore it was quick book to read – in about 3 hours this had been read cover to cover.
All in all, I think people who are in their mid-late teens might enjoy this, and I think you might have to be a loyal fan of Tanya’s to really love it. Whilst I have watched her videos for years, I’ve always felt unsure of very sweet girl next door personality (probably because it’s the polar opposite to me), and that personality does come through in the book.
So far my ventures in to the youtuber book revolution has left me disappointed, I have on preorder Fleur De Force’s Glam Guide that is released on the 12th February. I’ve said several times that I’m a massive fan of Fleur and her blog is easy to read whilst not being so simply worded it becomes boring, I think Fleur’s fan-base is largely her age group of mid-late twenties so I’m hoping to see that reflected in the writing and content.
Have you read Love Tanya? What did you think?
Rachael
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