Be the Love: Seven Ways to Unlock Your Heart and Manifest Happiness

This empowering guide by inspirational speaker Prout (Dear Universe) doles out strategies and affirmations to boost self-love. “I want you to be the love you wish to feel... because the truth is that if you can’t love yourself... it becomes almost impossible to love others,” Prout writes, sharing the three “core elements” of how to love oneself: feel, heal, and reveal. She explains that readers should embrace even unpleasant emotions, “take responsibility” for them, and trust that their intuition will reveal the right way forward. Each of the seven chapters centers on an affirmation to help one find the “path back to love,” including “I am intuitive,” “I am worthy,” and “I am ready,” and suggests such self-care measures as enjoying a bath, catching up with a friend, and taking sensible risks. Prout’s candor about such weighty matters as her miscarriages and survival of domestic violence adds poignancy and gravity to her advice, which brims with optimism and insight (“the past does not define the future”). Self-help aficionados will feel the love for this one. (May)