Book Review: Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day by Kate Bowler

Rating: 4.5 stars of 5

Kate Bowler has become an auto-buy author for me and I was so excited when my preordered copy of her newest book arrived! Her writing is always so beautiful, raw, and resonant, and even though this book has around 90 entries in it, I ended up reading the whole thing in about four days.

I thoroughly loved it, from the heartwarming dedication to the very last reflection prompt. Each entry has an introduction, a poem of blessing or reflection on the opposite page, and a reflection prompt for the reader.

Here are some lines from two of my favorite poems in the book:

“Let the sun come down from the sky
and touch me,
and I will walk out to greet it
feeling the low murmur of the ground
beneath my feet.

And as the earth makes it creaky turns
toward night,
let the day fall in behind us.
”What next?” we will say to the night sky,
before we close the door
and consider its answer
tomorrow.”

“…plant in us a seed of wonder.
Could something new grow here
amidst the rot and ruin?
Something that safeguards our hearts
and risks them, all at once.
Restore us. Renew us.
Begin where nothing grows.”’

It was hard to choose just two segments to share, as my own copy of the book is now full of little sticky note flags, dog-eared pages, and lavender mildliner markings (I’ve apparently been converted from the keep-all-the-books-pristine reader I used to be into one who likes to be able to look at a book I’ve read and see how much I loved it), but those were amongst my favorites.

For those of you who observe Lent, the book has a section formatted to make it easy for you to follow along with the relevant entries throughout that season.

Content advisory: contains some mild language (d*mn and h*ll)

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