It's expected that the author of a book encouraging you to write "The Uncommon College Essay" would write uncommonly.

And just like an uncommon essay can hit or miss when landing on the desk of a college admissions officer, you may love Stacey Brooke's book.
In my case, her uncommon writing style was grating, distracting, and irritating.
It was a miss for me.

As she states in the blurb: "and (fair warning!) a generous dose of parenthetical asides. (She just can’t help herself.)"

Yup, that's true (and gets annoying).

Four of those parathetical remarks had the word "nerd!"

Brooke's chatty, informal style is meant to keep things light and fun. And for some readers, they'll love it. (For me, not so much.)
Maybe I'm a grouchy (maybe? Definitely).
However, I prefer content without lame asides or dad-joke humor.

Luckily, the book's saving grace is that the advice (behind the fluff) is excellent.
So if you can overlook the writing style (or if you love it), then you'll get valuable info out of this book.

VERDICT: 3.5 stars. Grade inflation rounds it up to 4 stars. (Annoyed, yet?)

An excellent resource for the introduction to writing college essays--or teaching creative writing with lots of prewriting and drafting, honestly. I've essentially followed a similar philosophy in my own teaching and tutoring, and it is refreshing to see it put down in text. So many students and parents have the wrong idea about the role of the essay in the application process, and so many tutors, frankly, just interfere too much to churn out a product that the parents will approve of. The real process takes time and buy-in, and this details it nicely. The author does a great job of dividing the process into tasks--also helpful if working with a group of students in a writing group. The final chapters sort of repeat the information in the free writing chapters, but overall I'm so glad I got to read this and would love to have a physical copy to share with students and parents. It is written for student engagement, but also would be great for parents and teachers and tutors. Highly recommend. Thank you to Bloomsbury Academic and NetGalley for the advanced copy and the opportunity to share my review and put these ideas into action!

A good step-by-step and unique guide to writing essays in higher education.
It is particularly handy for new college students/freshman. I totally see my students who look for engaging guides that align with their attention needs read this book.
You have been warned (see the blurb) - there are many parentheticals and they are for your own good.
I will recommend this book to my colleagues, students and will make sure our university has copies.