The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad Review: Is This Journaling Book Worth It?
If you’re looking for a review of The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad—or wondering if it’s a good journaling book—this post breaks down what it’s about, how it reads, and whether it’s worth your time.
I reach for the page like I reach for prayer… to plead, to confess…
Some lines stay with you long after you’ve read them—and this is one of those lines. It lingered with me well after I finished The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad, not because it’s particularly ornate, but because it’s honest. It captures the quiet, almost instinctive way the book approaches writing: not as performance or productivity, but as a place to put what otherwise has nowhere to go.
If you’ve been searching for a journaling book that doesn’t feel preachy, a creative writing guide that doesn’t rush you or make you feel like a failure before you’ve even begun, this one is for you.
What Is The Book of Alchemy About?
At first glance, it presents itself as a guide to journaling. And structurally it does exactly that. The book is organized into ten themes….On fear….On love….On Ego…..each section pairing short essays with prompts meant to spark reflection.
But reading it only as a how-to guide feels like missing the point entirely because this is not a book you move through. It’s a book you sit with…for days.
A little background on Suleika Jaouad: she’s the Emmy Award–winning author of Between Two Kingdoms and the creator of the Isolation Journals, a newsletter and global community born during the COVID lockdowns. She first started journaling when she was diagnosed with leukemia at twenty-two and told she had a 35% chance of survival. Writing wasn’t a hobby for her, it was a means of survival. And that urgency can be felt woven through every page of this book.
The Book of Alchemy is a New York Times bestseller and an NPR Best Book of the Year. Its contributors include Elizabeth Gilbert, George Saunders, Hanif Abdurraqib, Jon Batiste, Gloria Steinem alongside cancer survivors, professional surfers, and incarcerated writers.
Not a Guide. A Collection of Encounters.
There’s something quietly radical about how Jaouad has built this. Instead of a single voice guiding you from start to finish, she assembles a chorus. Over a hundred contributors, each humming a small window into their own way of seeing. The result does not read in a linear form rather uneven and sometimes even overwhelming but also deeply human.
I did not read it as a sequence of prompts for journalling rather as a collection of short essays. Some that landed immediately, others that didn’t, and a few that lingered in ways I didn’t expect.
And that flexibility might be its strongest feature.
Writing as a Way to Hold, Not Fix
A recurring idea in the book is that writing doesn’t necessarily solve anything. It doesn’t promise clarity, at least not right away. Instead, it offers containement.
“Fear grows in silence. When you write it down, you give it shape…”
This idea echoes throughout the book that putting something into language, owever messy, changes your relationship to it. Not by fixing it, but by making it visible. If you’ve spent any time with Brené Brown’s work on vulnerability, you’ll recognize this same instinct immediately, that naming something, saying it out loud or writing it down, shifts something in you. Jaouad is doing the same work here, just through the lens of journaling.
Do You Have to Do the Journaling Prompts?
The prompts invite you to write, but don’t demand it. You can read an essay and stop there. You can underline a line and move on. You can return days later and land somewhere completely different. The book accommodates all of that.
“The journal is… a place where you can tell the truth without interruption…”
That’s the energy it carries. Not urgency, but permission.
What the “Alchemy” in the Title Actually Means
The transformation this book promises is’nt about becoming better. It’s about becoming more attentive.
More willing to sit with uncertainty. More willing to notice what’s already there.
The book keeps returning to the idea that creativity comes from engaging with discomfort rather than avoiding it. This reminded me a lot of what drew me to Notes from a Blue Bike by Tsh Oxenreider — that same longing to slow down enough to actually notice your own life. Both books, in their own way, are asking you to be more intentional about how you move through the world. One through simplicity, the other through the page.
Or as one line in The Book of Alchemy puts it simply:
“What would you write if you weren’t afraid?”
It’s a simple question. It lands harder the longer you sit with it.
Is The Book of Alchemy Worth Reading?
I didn’t use this book the way it was “intended.” I didn’t follow the prompts in order. I didn’t treat it as a daily practice. Instead, I read it in fragments, returning to it the way you return to certain thoughts, or certain conversations.
And maybe that’s the point.
Because in the end, this isn’t really a book about journaling.
It’s a book about attention. About making space. About learning, slowly, how to sit with your own life and, occasionally, to write your way through it. Keep in mind that with so many contributors, not every essay resonates. Some feel sharp and distilled; others blur together.
If you’re someone who has always wanted to journal but doesn’t know where to start — this book is a gentle, unhurried way in. And if you’re already a journaler, it’ll remind you why you started.
“We write not because we know where we’re going… but because we don’t.”
Sometimes, that’s reason enough.
Happy Reading 
