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A review by chareadsss
Will by Will Smith, Mark Manson
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
I'm a Will fan, but I admit that I got a bit sick of the Will and Jada train at one point, so by the time they released their books, I didn't want to read anything more about either of them 😂 What a shame it would've been to miss out on this book though!
It's funny because as fans, or people watching from the outside, we can often feel like we really know *insert celebrity name here* when, in actuality, we don't have the slightest idea about that person's true experience or who they really are as a person.
Will really isn't who/what I thought he was and is definitely more than the wholesome, clean-cut joker that I saw him as. I loved how open this was and not only do you learn a lot about him, but it was interesting to get an insight into people like Jada, their children (I'd almost forgotten about Willow's "Whip My Hair" days!), Jazzy Jeff and even Will's first wife, Sheree.
There were so many life lessons in this book and it was insightful and informative without losing Will's charm and humour. It threw up a lot of questions, with one topic that I often circled back to being fatherhood, and what a good (or not so good) father looks like to me. Now you may (or may not) have seen/heard things about him, but "Daddio" was a very contentious person for me personally and I loved discussing this with my babe of a buddy reader, @ttsreads.
Some of the subject shifts between paragraph breaks did take a bit of getting used to, and there were a lot of people to remember, but I actually think this helped humanise Will more. I'm also a very visual person so loved the inclusion of pictures. Not only did it add more of a personal touch but it was helpful to get a sense of the physical environments and put faces to names (also, some of the captions were hilarious 😆).
I laughed, almost cried, gasped, winced, literally any expression or emotion you can think of, I probably experienced whilst reading this book. It really felt like I was on a journey with Will, and I actually want to listen to the audiobook because I often felt like I could hear him relaying this to me and this made it even more fun to read!
It's funny because as fans, or people watching from the outside, we can often feel like we really know *insert celebrity name here* when, in actuality, we don't have the slightest idea about that person's true experience or who they really are as a person.
Will really isn't who/what I thought he was and is definitely more than the wholesome, clean-cut joker that I saw him as. I loved how open this was and not only do you learn a lot about him, but it was interesting to get an insight into people like Jada, their children (I'd almost forgotten about Willow's "Whip My Hair" days!), Jazzy Jeff and even Will's first wife, Sheree.
There were so many life lessons in this book and it was insightful and informative without losing Will's charm and humour. It threw up a lot of questions, with one topic that I often circled back to being fatherhood, and what a good (or not so good) father looks like to me. Now you may (or may not) have seen/heard things about him, but "Daddio" was a very contentious person for me personally and I loved discussing this with my babe of a buddy reader, @ttsreads.
Some of the subject shifts between paragraph breaks did take a bit of getting used to, and there were a lot of people to remember, but I actually think this helped humanise Will more. I'm also a very visual person so loved the inclusion of pictures. Not only did it add more of a personal touch but it was helpful to get a sense of the physical environments and put faces to names (also, some of the captions were hilarious 😆).
I laughed, almost cried, gasped, winced, literally any expression or emotion you can think of, I probably experienced whilst reading this book. It really felt like I was on a journey with Will, and I actually want to listen to the audiobook because I often felt like I could hear him relaying this to me and this made it even more fun to read!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Domestic abuse, and Grief