Penny, The Review Group's reviewer Penny for Your ThoughtsThe Review Group
Self-help ✦ Penny’s Take

Fully Present

Susan L. Smalley · 2010
78/100
👍 Worth It

One of the cleaner introductions to mindfulness you'll find — the three-part chapter structure (science, story, practice) is genuinely useful and the UCLA research grounding keeps it honest. Readers who want a strictly secular or explicitly Christian frame for mindfulness should know Diana Winston's Buddhist-nun background shapes the practice sections, even though the book is deliberately non-sectarian. For most adults curious about mindfulness, this is a reliable starting point.

✦ Penny’s Take — this is The Review Group’s own editorial assessment. Penny’s analytical review line researched this book from real sources and scored it across the lenses shown below. It’s an honest first-party read — not a page-by-page personal one. The gold ✓ Penny Tested mark is reserved for books Penny reads cover to cover herself.
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Verdict receipt0–100
safety80
substance80
craft78
originality68
accuracy82
hype74
age-fit85
human-eye78
Penny’s verdict78
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