Tag: non-fiction

Triumphs of Tenacity: From Struggle to Success is an inspirational memoir of resilience, women’s empowerment, and immigrant success that will uplift anyone facing challenges in life.

Born in Bangladesh and moving to the UK at just seven years old, Yusra Mariyam faced enormous obstacles—adapting to a new culture, overcoming academic failures, and balancing the demands of motherhood. As a homemaker raising six children, her dream of higher education seemed impossible. Yet, through sheer perseverance, determination, and self-
belief, she transformed her life, graduating with a First-Class Honours degree in International Business Management from Anglia Ruskin University.

This powerful true story of courage and transformation explores the struggles of immigrant women, the challenges of adult education, and the journey of personal growth against all odds. It is a moving testament to resilience, empowerment, and the triumph of hope—a memoir that shows how tenacity can turn even the hardest struggles into success.

Readers looking for:
● Women’s empowerment books that inspire change
● Memoirs about overcoming adversity and finding strength
● Immigrant success stories filled with courage and hope
● Motivational books about education, resilience, and self-belief
…will find this memoir unforgettable and deeply motivating.

If you enjoy inspiring biographies, personal growth journeys, and real-life stories of achievement, this book belongs on your shelf.

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Yusra Mariyam is a London-based Business Growth Executive, writer, and mother of six. Born in Bangladesh and raised in the UK from the age of seven, she brings a rich cross-cultural perspective to her writing. Before entering the corporate world, she devoted many years to raising her children full-time, without ever imagining she would have the chance to pursue higher education.

That dream became a reality when she returned to university as a mature student, juggling family life, full-time work, and academic study. In 2024, she graduated with First-Class Honours in International Business Management—an achievement that inspired her debut memoir.

Triumphs of Tenacity is more than a traditional memoir. It’s a deeply personal account of one woman’s journey to reclaim her identity through grit, growth, and determination. Yusra shares how she balanced motherhood, career, and education in pursuit of self-empowerment. Her voice is honest, unflinching, and ultimately hopeful—inviting readers to see obstacles not as dead ends, but as turning points.

She hopes her journey inspires everyone—regardless of gender, age, or background—to believe that it’s never too late to redefine their path and pursue long-held dreams.

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My thoughts: This was an interesting read, Yusra came to the UK as a young child, and her father’s gentle advice and inspiring words helped her cope with life’s little rejections and failures. As a mother of six, she didn’t imagine university was for her, until a woman in the careers service encouraged her to apply to study for a business degree. 

She chronicles her time as a mature student, with the support of her family, especially her husband and children, and with her father’s continued love and support, she achieves her goal and graduates. She credits not only the people around her, but also her Muslim faith for helping her through the difficulties and hard work.

While her life has not always been easy, and those early knockbacks affected her confidence for a long time, she overcame the many challenges and struggles along the way. It’s an inspiring and encouraging – reminding us all, regardless of our background, that you can do whatever you set your mind to, whatever your age or life.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

“My name is Phyllis Ada Latour, known to many in my later years as Pippa, and I am 102 years old. I am also known by other names — code names and alias names — because I was a World War II secret operative agent. This is my memoir, which finally tells the story of my life working behind enemy lines in France 80 years ago. It is a part of my life that, until now, I have intentionally never revealed to anybody. Not my husband (when I had one), nor my children — even when they became adults. This book tells the truth about my war. I’m the last living female special operative from F Section and I need to record what happened before I die. I would like to leave my story behind so that, perhaps, young women in particular might know what it was like for me back then”. – Pippa Latour

‘Vivid, honest, inspiring and sometimes shocking, Pippa Latour’s memoir shows how right the SOE were to assess her as having ‘”tons of guts”‘ – CLARE MULLEY, author of Agent Zo

The Last Secret Agent, by Pippa Latour is the extraordinary untold story of Latour, who parachuted into occupied France in 1944 as an undercover agent and sent secret messages back to Britain.

In June 1940, a covert new force – the Special Operations Executive (SOE) – was set up to wage a secret war. Its agents were tasked with sabotage and subversion behind enemy lines, and over the course of the next five years, 470 special agents would be sent into France. Only 26 female SOE agents, including Pippa, would return. Pippa had an extraordinary life – born in 1921 she lived in Congo, Kenya and France before eventually landing in London. In 1943, aged 23, she was parachuted into France, where she travelled around the occupied countryside, concealing her codes in a hair tie and her Morse key underneath her bicycle seat, and sending crucial information back to Britain in the lead-up to D-Day. More than once, she came frighteningly close to being discovered. For decades, Pippa told no one – not even her family – of her incredible feats.

Now for the first time, her story can be told in full. It is an incredibly rare first-person story. Although there are several biographies of female WW2 spies, there are no other first-person memoirs of this kind. And as the last female WW2 SOE agent to die, Pippa’s story will be the first and last to be told in this way. It is a rare and privileged glimpse into her life, and in many ways, it is Pippa’s last public service, her last contribution to freedom. It is a remarkable testament to a remarkable and brave woman.

THE AUTHOR PIPPA LATOUR – following the war, Pippa settled in New Zealand where she raised four children. For decades, Pippa told no one – not even her family – of her incredible feats during WWII. For seventy years, Pippa’s contributions to the war effort were largely unheralded, but she was finally given her due in 2014 when she was awarded France’s highest order of merit, the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Pippa was the last surviving F (France) Section Special Operations (SOE) agent from World War II. In the final months of her life, Pippa finally decided to tell her remarkable story, written with the assistance of award-winning historical documentary producer and writer Jude Dobson. Pippa died in 2023, at the age of 102.

My thoughts: This was incredible, Pippa Latour lived a heck of a life, born in South Africa, raised in the Congo, orphaned but with a wonderful extended family who love her, sent to finishing school in Paris just before the war and then after joining the WAAF, she’s recruited by SOE to go to France undercover as a spy.

Her life behind enemy lines is incredibly dangerous, terrifying and yet there’s something a little bit magical about it. Pretending to be a teenage girl selling her French grandparents soap, she snoops around the Normandy countryside, relaying troop movements and locations by radio, in Morse code, to London, as D-Day preparations ramp up.

Shocking, terrible things happen, some of them because of her intel, and her own life is on the line several times. She mentions the other female SOE operatives in France, many of whom sadly did not survive, incredibly brave women all.

Pippa lived to be 102, having lived and extraordinary life, but her war years were largely unknown, even to her family, for a long time. This memoir is full of brave, courageous, ordinary men and women opposing the massed forces of the Nazis and fighting for freedom. It stands as a wonderful tribute to those people and also to the magnificent Pippa herself, who did something few could and help influence the course of the Second World War. Genuinely inspiring, heart pounding, mind boggling stuff.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

‘As Miranda Priestley might say, ‘a million girls would kill for this job’.

Well, Ruth Crilly is here to tell you why that might … not … quite be true.

England. 2001. Ruth Crilly has embarked on a law degree and is destined for a life of normality and stability. That is, of course, until she sticks a polaroid of herself in a box somewhere in Birmingham and is scouted by one of the biggest agencies in the world.

Flung between Redditch and Milan, telesales and Vogue, wizard cloaks and red shearling coats, follow Ruth through a riproaring, hilarious decade of not-quite-making-it as a supermodel. Fuelled by little more than cigarettes and a fear of being measured she criss-crosses the world in pursuit of fame and fortune.

Bridget Jones meets the Devil Wears Prada as told by a mix of Marina Hyde and Bryony Gordon: How Not To Be A Supermodel is a time capsule of a book that dives into one of the world’s most fascinating industries. Offering a glimpse into both the high glamour and juddering reality of a by-gone era, this is a comic memoir gracefully relayed by a pessimistic, sardonic disaster-magnet.

Ruth is an award-winning online writer and content creator respected for her honest beauty reviews and loved for her hilarious, unfiltered life updates. After spending over a decade as a fashion model, she became one of the UK’s first social media stars in 2010 and her eponymous blog has been read more than 50 million times. Her earlier career as a successful fashion model left her with a fear of tape measures, diminished confidence in her physical appearance and a horrible tendency to rely on selfdeprecation as a form of humour. Follow Ruth on Instagram: ruthcrilly Subscribe to Ruth’s YouTube channel: amodelrecommends

“What you’re about to read is a very frank, very truthful account of what happened to me as a fashion model, twenty-ish years ago. Brace yourself. Seldom has a memoir been so misguidedly brave – rarely will you have seen an author left so vulnerable, so very exposed to utter humiliation and ridicule. I only ask that you read it in the intended spirit, which is to laugh uproariously and revel in my humiliation. Because this isn’t a grim exposé of the modelling industry in the noughties: it’s a raucous, hilarious romp through a decade of my biggest and best mishaps and catastrophes, some of which were no doubt brought upon myself. (But not the time that I accidentally performed in an informal sex show, that was entirely down to fate.)

How Not To Be A Supermodel isn’t (just) a grouse about how I was never cool enough, tall enough or thin enough to make it to true modelling stardom: it’s a catalogue of all the ways I wasn’t cut out for a life of fame and fortune. It’s a nostalgic love/hate letter to my bizarre first career and all of the ways it probably messed me up. I’m sure you will find yourself totally immersed in the world of modelling from the very first sentence (which is, incidentally, ‘You don’t see Milla Jovovich with a fluctuating arse,”) but just in case you need a little help getting into the zone, I’ve recorded a guided meditation. Take a few moments before you begin the book; find a quiet space, close your eyes and allow yourself to be transported right back to 2001, into the mind of a fledgling fashion model…”

My thoughts: I follow Ruth on Instagram and think she’s hilarious so I was excited to read her memoir, all about her modelling career in the 00s.

She is just as funny in print as on social media, turning her misadventures in the model business into an entertaining and occasionally alarming read. Viewed from 2024 the things that were accepted in the early 00s do seem completely crazy  – and Ruth is very aware of that.

It’s also the story of how Ruth met her lovely husband, a photographer then known as Filthy Rich. And why she quit modelling, having done her degree and almost died in the freezing cold, and decided to do something else – be absolutely hilarious on the Internet.

I think it helped that Ruth has a sense of humour and never took the whole modelling thing too seriously, luckily never developed any addictions or eating disorders and was down to earth and in her twenties.

There are some pretty unpleasant things she went through and some truly mean people, but on the whole she survived it all, the weird concepts (the penguin hat was particularly bizarre), the travel to stay in grim apartments and earn a total of £28.28 for a month in Tokyo, the poor health from the strange hours, the freezing cold location shoots, the standing still for ages.

The book is very funny, Ruth has a wry tone familiar to her online followers and a healthy disregard for fashion’s insanity. She’s fully aware that the obsession with thin is unhealthy and stupid, she was on the large side of modelling at a size 10, which seems bonkers when the average is a size 16, but most models are even tinier.

It was a really fascinating read but like Ruth, I’m glad she got out in one piece and is happier and enjoying the life she has now, with her family, cat, and career. 

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.