This book is less about the advice and more about the advice givers, delving into the lives and experience (or lack thereof) each of the subjects Weisberg writes about. I found this book to be a struggle to get through and not what I was expecting at all. I don't really understand what the purpose was or who the intended audience was supposed to be. I would have preferred if this was less of a deep dive on the lives of the advice givers and more about the actual platforms they each shared their information, but alas. *ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

I found this book to be a bit of a struggle to get through. The synopsis sounded really interesting but the first (large) part of the book outlining history was dry and ,to me, somewhat boring. It did improve later when the discussion moved to more modern times but not enough to totally redeem it.
My thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I was pleased by the historic perspective in the book, I think it really fits into a recent trend of interest in advice columns.

At first this book was a bit exciting. Why do we always seek out the advice of others? The author does a great bit of research on the history of advice givers. Yet I felt the book was incomplete. I would have liked to see each genre of advice givers featured. For instance, Dr. Ruth for sex, Dr Phil for TV, etc. The author was limited in her scope of focusing on Dorthea Dix and Ann Landers, and Dear Abbby, while forgetting some of the other genres. Yet, the author acknowledges that she could have written about more advice givers, I contend that the author should have organized the book better and included some of the pioneers. Overall a good overview, but missed the mark.