''The Goddess Guide to Branding: Your Blueprint for Building an Abundant & Authentic Feminine Brand'' is a book about branding your business using the Greek-roman goddesses archetypes.

The book provides the reader with many interviews and examples of real-life businesses that fit those types that are thoroughly explained.

Also, there were a lot of tests to do on your own and the colors and fonts of the text were spot on, with bright photos of the brands to boot.

I do have to say that the whole goddess concept got tiring after a while, but the author did a great job using a language that was easy to understand even if you had no business administration studies.

The idea was great but the execution not so much. Needs more professional graphics and a cleaner design, with dynamic examples rather than meh transcribed interviews.

I received an ARC of “The Goddess Guide to Branding: Your Blueprint for Building An Abundant & Authentic Feminine Brand” by Jane McCarthy and Kate McAndrew from NetGalley and Peakpoint Press in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t read a lot of business books. It’s not that I don’t like business, it’s just that those types of books don’t usually capture my attention. The title of this book did right away.

This book helps businesses to brand using eight Greco-Roman goddesses as archetypes. This in itself is a really creative idea and will most likely appeal to feminine readers. But despite the fabulous title and the great branding ideas, there were some problems with this book—problems that I hope that the authors will address prior to publication.

The authors chose to use simple line drawings to reveal the goddesses. And when I say simple, I mean simple. I truly appreciate art, but the drawings look like they were done in mere minutes. There’s no shading, no coloring. But to make matters worse, the authors use the same type of hand drawing in place of professional graphics. For example, why hand draw a bullseye when you can incorporate a clean-line professional one? I’m sorry to say that the use of simple line drawings looks sloppy and careless. How does this go with the book’s brand? Not well, I think.

In the “Going Further” section, the authors list many sources, but this was done haphazardly and was incomplete—only the titles and authors were listed. The authors need to include full citations. And instead of walking readers through the process of how other women branded their businesses, they rely primarily on transcribed interviews. I would have liked to have seen the authors discuss the interviewees and then include short snippets of quotes in a sidebar. As it is, the transcribed interviews are tiresome to read. And that’s a shame because I love the idea of empowering the feminine and helping people to succeed through the use of branding with the help of goddesses.

When people look at the title of this book, they are going to be excited. But the way that the book is presented on the inside really fails to live up to it and I think in its present form, readers might feel cheated. Goddesses aren’t plain and simple, they’re colorful and full of depth; they’re vibrant.

The publishers really need to revamp this book prior to publication and design it better using high quality art work and graphics. And the authors need to think about formatting as well. Instead of overwhelming readers with boring transcribed interviews, they need to write about it and strategically use quoted material from those interviews.

The authors have a really solid gold idea. Their use of goddesses in branding could go really far and could be an absolute hit with the public. But the way that they present those ideas is not just distracting—it’s disappointing.