Book excerpt: “Consistently entertaining . . . she writes with unflinching honesty . . . Bridget Jones meets Buddha in this plucky, heartwarming, comical debut memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) For years journalist Marianne Power lined her bookshelves with dog-eared copies of definitive guides on how to live your best life, dipping in and out of self-help books when she needed them most. Then, one day, she woke up to find that the life she hoped for and the life she was living were worlds apart—and she set out to make some big changes. Marianne decided to finally find out if her elusive “perfect existence” —the one without debt, anxiety, or hangover Netflix marathons, the one where she healthily bounced around town and met the cashmere-sweater-wearing man of her dreams—really did lie in the pages of our best known and acclaimed self-help books. She vowed to test a book a month for one year, following its advice to the letter, taking what she hoped would be the surest path to a flawless new her. But as the months passed and Marianne’s reality was turned upside down, she found herself confronted with a different question: Self-help can change your life, but is it for the better? With humor, audacity, disarming candor and unassuming wisdom, in Help Me Marianne Power plumbs the trials and tests of being a modern woman in a “have it all” culture, and what it really means to be our very best selves. “Equal parts touching and hilarious, Power’s account of the year she spent following the tenets of self-help books will make you feel better about your own flawed life.” —People