Dr. Cook's book The Best of You is an outstanding work of art! The author correlates scripture from the Bible along with scientific studies/facts, to create a symphony of information showing us how we can be our Best Selves! Dr. Cook displays a keen understanding of how we are to reflect the image of God in our daily lives, and how it should be our #1 priority in life to focus on our relationship with God, and then others.

I read this book after reading I Shouldn't Feel this Way and I found that this book gave me a lot of insight into areas in my own life where I need healing and growth to occur. Past hurts can overtake our lives and if we aren't careful, can infiltrate it like a disease. We must put in the daily work to work towards our individual healing, and have compassion and empathy for others as they worked through their own healing journey's, too.

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas Nelson for a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Conversational and wise, this book feels like what you hope your therapist would tell you. So helpful and one I'll be returning to.

In The Best of You, Alison Cook has written a book to help readers to break from their past and stepping into who you are supposed to be. She shared how she thought of this idea for the book when she experienced a hurt finger during Covid lockdown session. She described it as if her finger disconnected from her body. The day before she wrote about on her blog about learning to trust yourself. She has on average about 30,000 views. Later, she realized that she was having a stroke and there was a blood clot making its way to her brain while she was writing on her blog. She explained how this led to anxiety and a longing to write this book.



She begins by sharing the silent message women are faced with and how they are supposed disregard themselves for the sake of others. When we do this, we avoid, ignore, and skip over people and you treat them as if they aren’t important. We are sacrificing ourselves for others and we focus on other people and ignore our wants and desires. This will lead us down the path to bitterness and burnout and people pleasing. She explored Jesus and how he learned to say no and set boundaries. He said no to being on all the time, no to pleasing and performing, toxic behavior, no to bullies, and much more. He said yes to his purpose, asking for help, honoring his emotions, and choosing friends. She shared how women especially need to become who they are.


I would recommend this life changing book to anyone who is ready to become their very best version of themselves. She helped readers set boundaries, heal from emotional wounds, repairing your relationship with God, seeing yourself as God sees you, trusting yourself, and becoming authentic. This book is excellent to help women to become who God created them to me and its primary for them. But anyone can benefit. Everyone needs to be the best version of themselves. The lessons and the information presented in this book is very well written to assist us in becoming who we were meant to be.