30 Things I Love About Myself Review

By Nic Daniels

TW: Depression, suicide, and drug abuse

Hello, audacious readers! Happy new year! I hope the first week of 2024 has been easygoing. Now, while the year is new, we know we have to flashback to 2023 one more time as we talk about our December read, 30 Things I Love About Myself by Radhika Sanghani.

Nina Mistry was ready for her 30th birthday to be her best yet. She was supposed to be engaged, surrounded by friends, and have a job she loves. Instead, she recently ended her engagement, has no friends to call, and is spending the night in jail. But just when all seems lost, an officer gives her a self-help book called How to Love Yourself (and Fix Your Shitty Life in the Process) to pass the time. By the time she’s released, she has a new goal: for the next year, she’s going to find 30 things she loves about herself.

However, healing journeys are never easy, and the changes will be drastic. Nina will have to face hard truths and look within to find exactly what she needs to rebuild her relationship with herself and those she loves.

For people who don’t like self-help books but want to read up on healing, this book is a great alternative. It’s refreshing seeing someone truly going through a healing journey in a fiction book. Often, it can be more of a montage section or romance is used as a distraction but with this book, we follow Nina through all the ups and downs. Nothing is given easily nor is anything ignored for convenience; she feels real and imperfect.

I also appreciate that this story is from a woman of color’s perspective because it faces the harsh reality of talking about mental health in a minority community. While it’s become a lot easier to talk about mental health and share struggles, for many minority women, trying to improve your mental health was uniquely difficult. Seeking professional help in any way was a source of shame and if becoming healthier didn’t fit in with the status quo, you could be bullied or even excluded from your community.

An example of this in Nina’s story is her brother’s battle with depression. For the past year, Nina has watched her brother suffer through depressive episodes and it wasn’t until she worked on helping herself was she able to help him. A huge step to being able to do this was being honest about the situation and pushing for honest conversations about her father’s suicide, which happened when she was a child. This has been something that has affected Nina’s sense of safety and her relationship with her family. While, her initial response was to not really get involved, step back on the sidelines whenever there was a negative reaction, she pushes through that and shares her truth. Of course, it’s not a magical cure but it does give her freedom to heal from that aspect of her life.

To me, that freedom is key because falling in love is never easy. Falling in love with yourself can feel especially impossible. But by giving yourself room to be wrong, to defy expectation, to have tough conversations, and to surprise yourself, you give yourself a chance to find the version of yourself that’s been missing all along.

I hope you enjoyed 30 Things I Love About Myself. I'll be sharing all my thoughts on the upcoming IG live with founder, Jessica Wise. Feel free to comment your thoughts below and, until next time, don’t forget to read audaciously!