Self-help ✦ Penny’s Take 🎧 Audiobook
Happiness
Matthieu Ricard · 2018
🎙 Narrated by Robert Fass (U.S. Audible/Hachette edition); note the UK edition is narrated by Humphrey Bower — confirm regional narrator before publishing if it matters to your audience.
77/100
👍 Worth It
Ricard brings a rare combination — real neuroscience credentials plus decades of Buddhist monastic practice — to make a genuinely rigorous case that happiness is a skill you can train, not a mood that just happens to you. It's dense and philosophical in places, and worth knowing upfront that the framework here is Buddhist rather than Christian, so faith-friendly listeners should go in with that awareness. The narration is professionally handled and well-suited to the material — worth the listen.
✦ 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.
⚠ Parent note — our reviewers flagged: Explicitly grounded in Buddhist religious/spiritual philosophy and meditation practice — not a Christian worldview; faith-friendly readers should know this before diving in.. We still scored it 77; these are context for your family, not an automatic skip.
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🎙 Narration: good Professionally narrated (Hachette/Little Brown Audio); U.S. edition narrated by Robert Fass, UK edition by Humphrey Bower — confirm regional narrator if it matters to your audience.
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Show the math
Verdict receipt0–100
Faith & family safety68
Substance / usefulness85
Craft & writing78
Originality80
Evidence & accuracy78
Hype vs delivers75
Age-fit80
Human-eye read78
Penny’s verdict77
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