“Love Your Hair” promises 24 easy-to-follow “recipes” for effortlessly sexy hair.
I put my name down to review this book in November and when it arrived in March, I had just taken part in Shave for a Cure! Oops. As a result, I don’t have a lot of hair to experiment with and I will review the book based on reading the instructions and imagining myself trying to follow them. I hope that’s still helpful!
The book starts with an introduction to the power of a good haircut/style, a guide to hair and hair products, a list of “hardware”, thirteen basic “recipes” and some more complicated styles. It has some general advice that could be useful for men, but it is aimed at women.
I’m liking
I like the step-by-step “recipe” instructions and photos, and the list of basic hardware is good. It was the first time I’d seen hair described in terms of “density” as well as “thickness”.
Most of the basic hairstyles looked quite achievable with a bit of practice.
Things that made me go hmmmm
The first thing I noticed about the book was that the model on the front cover had frizzy flyaways! I know that the style is described as “Bohemian Waves” not “Glamour Waves,” but I still would have expected the style on the front of a how-to hair book to look smooth and professional.
Having seen the helpful distinction between dense and less dense hair, the book didn’t then give any recommendations about which styles would be good for which sort of hair.
I would have liked a lot more pictures – for example, in the hardware list it would have been good to have pictures of everything. I also thought that some of the recipes moved from one step to another in quite big jumps and that a picture would have made it easier to follow what was going on.
Recipe 07 (Blowdry cheat for extra volume) and Recipe 08 (Blowdry cheat for extra volume in medium to long hair) only varied in a few small details – they could easily have been combined into one and the extra pages used for more detail for some of the other recipes.
I found some of the hairstyles a bit ridiculous (particularly the rockabilly pompadour and rockabilly rolled bangs) but I guess that’s a matter of taste!
I would also have liked some examples of the products used – rather than just saying “shine spray or serum”. There are a lot of products out there, and for a book that is presumably meant for people who don’t know a lot about hair or hair products, that would have been helpful.
The conclusion
This book is probably best for someone who does want to take the effort to go for some of the advanced styles. It could be a good gift for a teenager who is experimenting with different styles.
Some of the hair recipes refer to “hair padding” and I thought that might be hard to find, but a quick Google search showed that in fact there are stockists in New Zealand. I also found a YouTube video on how to make your own if you’re really keen!
If you have medium/long hair and are keen to spend some time on trying some different styles, this could be a good book for you.
