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Reviewed by Ruffina Oserio for Readers' Favorite
In Scary Good, career coach Angie Callen, who describes herself as a “recovering engineer who loves people,” traces her winding path from a soul-crushing Colorado cubicle to a life built entirely on her own terms. The book reads as both a memoir and a self-help book. The author shares her story of quitting her civil engineering job with her sommelier husband, Jim, and walks you through a bad business purchase, unemployment, and bankruptcy. Then she shares four winters living in a converted 1989 school bus before founding a six-figure coaching company, Career Benders, and buying the long-dreamed-of log cabin. She brings your attention to the “Sunday Scaries,” the anxiety and the fear that afflict the average American when they think about Monday and the beginning of another week. For Callen, it is not a scheduling problem but one of misalignment: lives that look perfect on paper but are messy in practice.
Angie Callen gives insights about life and career in a voice that grabs your attention: disarmingly honest, compassionate, and funny. She delivers lessons that recur like refrains, each of them earned the hard way. I loved her take on the Sunday Scaries, an observation that becomes the book's central claim. She opened my eyes to the fact that we struggle mostly because of misalignment and not stress. So, no amount of control or perfectionism can cure a life that feels wrong. Scary Good reframes failure as an event and shows how rock bottom can often provide the fuel we need for reinvention. The book is filled with insights and lessons about life. Here are some that stuck with me: confidence follows action, so measure once and cut anyway; resilience is about building something new, not necessarily bouncing back; gratitude and self-permission are muscles built through repetition. This book redefines grit, provides tools for career success, and shows how to build the mindset that wins in life and in business. Delivered in crisp prose and accessible writing, you will find the wisdom to realign your core values with your goals while understanding the steps to lead where you want to be.
