Review of Grace Liang’s book Finding Grace

I have been a long time follower of my fellow fashion blogger Grace Liang. I felt very honored when she asked me to review her first book entitled Finding Grace. This post is my book review of Finding Grace.

Disclosure: Ad. Grace Liang gifted me her book entitled Finding Grace. This post is not endorsed by her. I wrote it entirely on my own and  all opinions are mine and 100% honest.

Who Is Grace Liang: an American Woman, Blogger, Transformational Speaker, and Author

Many of you probably know Grace Liang, the Michigan blogger at Activate Your Inner Power, or from her former fashion blog Color and Grace.

Grace Liang is not only a petite style blogger and fashion enthusiast, but also a transformational speaker, a woman entrepreneur, and passionate about emotional fitness. Her story resonates deeply with readers, much like the impact a College Paper Editing Service by Expert Writers can have on students navigating stressful transitions—offering structured support when it’s needed most.

Grace’s Book Finding Grace

A Modern Fairy Tale

Grace Liang’s book is like a Mille Feuille (1000 sheets). This means something like a delicious French cake with several layers of puff pastry and buttercream in between. Her book is a book of love —a modern fairy tale about a Chinese girl growing up in rural China in a poor, dysfunctional family. She leaves her village for a big megacity where she meets her Prince from another New World. She follows him into his world, and marries him. Then she gets a functional American family and lives a great life; they both enjoy. Traditional fairy tales would end here with the sentence “they lived happily ever after.”

However, modern fairy tales often have a sad ending. In Grace’s case, a rare (and hence not well researched) disease took her man – as she calls him – away way too soon.

Life After Death

Other layers are, for example, the struggle with acceptance, dealing and understanding of death; her journey thru the different stages of the grievance process with the little victories and huge fallbacks along the long, difficult way, and turning her life upside-down, not only from being a loving wife and step-mother to a widow with stepchildren, but also from a hobby blogger and school teacher to a professional blogger, successful business woman helping others to grow thru their grieving process. These layers are also interweaved with learning to be ok with not being ok, and learning to be alone, but not feeling lonely and being ok with this acceptance despite the loss of a great loving partnership.

The Cruelty of Things Beyond Control

The next layer concerns the cruelty of things beyond one’s own control and how to deal with not being in control. This layer is a societal and cultural one. It is probably the hardest for a grieving person, as it is beyond the griever’s control.

For example, the perceptions of society towards widows who immigrated for a love marriage, but also the perceptions of a widow’s former fellow-citizens towards those who left their (former) home country. Grace’s discussion of cultural differences provides excellent insight into the diversity of humankind. It also helps in understanding what made America great: Adopting the best of each culture while acknowledging that the boundaries of one’s freedom are where the boundaries of the next person’s freedom start.

Self-Discovery, Coping and Self-Empowerment

The book is an eye-opener with respect to self-discovery.  She describes the empowerment of separating oneself from the (painful and/or angry) emotions to open up for a new (different) life ahead. It helps not to get stuck in the beautiful memories of the old life that one will never have again. Part of this process is also the discovery that the only place to live in is one’s own body. Consequently, one has to take care of its physical and emotional fitness.

Grace describes how watching your emotions teaches you about who you are; or even how taking the observer’s position can calm you down.  Acknowledging the thoughts, telling your brain, “Yes, thanks for the reminder, but this is not the right moment. Look at the great scenery. Smell the roses of summer. Taste the berry and cherry flavor of this wine. Listen to the chirping of the cricket and feel the warm sunshine and the wind’s play with your hair and gorgeous silk dress on your skin.”

Who Would Enjoy Reading Finding Grace

Grace gracefully conveys her messages on finding yourself in the form of her diary with narrative reflections from a later point of view. The reflections may be beneficial for everyone who lost a loved one or who had a major loss of any kind. The after reflections also put the different phases (and their repetition) of the grievance process into context.

Where to Buy Finding Grace

You can buy the book on Amazon.

Book Review of Finding Grace in a Nutshell

Grace Liang’s book is a Must-read for everyone who is going thru a substantial life change, not only those who lost a loved one. It is a guide to finding yourself and living a happy life on your terms. Like Coco Chanel said

Gace’s story is so enlightening; it should be on the reading list in college classes on literature of other cultures as well.

My mindset was that the worst had already happened; there was nothing left to be afraid of. – Grace Liang

You may also be interested in reading my review of Christina Chiu’s book Beauty.

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