Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Scribner Publishing, and Jen Psaki for the advanced reader copy of the book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

Jen Psaki has been involved in politics for quite some time. She’s worked on the ground as a canvasser in Iowa all the way up to White House Press Secretary for Joe Biden. However, while Say More is a book about those years, it’s not a dishy tell-all. It’s more Psaki relating how she learned to be a better communicator.

Psaki takes the reader through various scenarios and possible responses. You might think she hasn’t encountered the same situations people do in everyday life, but she relates how she’s had to have difficult conversations with people she worked with and who employed her and how that works for just about anyone. The sections with the conversations she has with people at work centered around being a working mother are great. She is fortunate, though, to work in an environment that wants their employees to have a work and family balance, rather than a company that expects slavish devotion to the workplace. I honestly thought I was going to hear more about how being a White House Press Secretary took away time from the family, but Psaki was able to make it work better than people employed in the private sector often can.

At the same time, she does talk about her own situations, without it coming off as “dishing.” She admits her faults when she said something she shouldn’t have or wasn’t clear enough about a topic and had to clarify later on. Some of the more difficult conversations she’s had are with her own children! She talks about the internet trolls bothered her at times, and how she learned to deal with it. Again, that’s something many of us can take a page from.

The writing style here is good. Psaki comes off at times like I’m in a communications course at a college, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We could all learn a little more about communicating in this day and age where people seem to want to show off what they think they know, rather than have conversations. Psaki details what it takes to be a great communicator, and some of that has to do with listening to people, even when you disagree with them.

Even if you’re not all that familiar with Jen Psaki, there are some great ideas in Say More that can help you with communication in everyday life. Add in her stories about the political figures she encountered as well as situations she faced that are recent history and Say More is a book that is very much worth reading.