Cailin Riley Books

When I first saw that Rachel Hollis had put out another book, this one titled, “What if YOU Are the Answer?” I was honestly surprised.

If you’re not familiar with Hollis, let me give you a short run down: Rachel Hollis is a famous, somewhat notorious blogger, author and motivational speaker. She rose to fame online about 10 years ago for her honesty about body struggles online and ran with that onto the book scene. Her first and second books, “Girl, Wash Your Face,” and “Girl, Stop Apologizing,” were big successes. Her third book, “Didn’t See That Coming,” largely focused on lessons she had learned after her divorce from her husband, Dave Hollis. Around that time, she also faced major controversy and outcry over videos she made comparing her life situation to the struggles of celebrated black women. People did not like it, and she lost many followers. Her ex-husband also passed away in 2023 due to a drug overdose.

Despite ALL of that, she kept cranking.

I do have a love/hate relationship with Hollis as an author and public figure. On the one hand, I do find the content of her books really relatable. I appreciate her honesty and forwardness with her life struggles and find it easy to identify with her advice, even though we live very different lives. (Hollis identifies as a “liberal Christian” and I’m about as far along the liberal non-religious scale as you can get.)

On the other hand, she has made many public mistakes that do make you cringe. I don’t expect any author to be perfect, but many of her choices make you consider if you should actually follow her advice.

For example, I remember way back when I first started reading her second book, not knowing she had gotten a divorce. (A lot of her first and second books had advice related to strengthening your relationships and a marriage.) I found out about her divorce while reading the book on the plane, and I remember thinking, Um, should I still read this and take her advice if her marriage ended?

I of course kept reading, because life happens and I don’t think an author’s personal life choices negate the potential truths of their advice. But as with any self-help author, I think it’s important to take the advice you vibe with, and leave the rest.

Have you ever read any of Hollis’ books? What do you think of them?