See Inside!Through the Storm by Lynne Spears: Book Cover

    Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World by Lynne Spears, Lorilee Craker

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    (Hardcover)

    Reader Rating: (25 ratings)

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    • Publisher: Thomas Nelson
    • Pub. Date: September 2008
    • ISBN-13: 9781595551566
    • Sales Rank: 1,615
    • 214pp
     
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    Synopsis

    We all want our children to succeed. What happens when they do?

    Britney Spears wanted to sing ever since she was a little girl. But the years of sacrifices, auditions, performances, albums, fame, and paparazzi left the little Louisiana family swept up and spun around, and nothing turned out the way anyone ever imagined or wanted. Now Lynne shares the inside story of the Spears family as only a mother can.

    Through the Storm takes readers outside the narrow orbit of the Hollywood glitterati. Lynne shares how fame forever changed their family; her regrets letting managers, agents, and record companies direct the lives of her children; the challenges that shaped Lynne and Jamie's failed marriage and how they affected Bryan, Britney, and Jamie Lynn; the startling events that led to Britney's breakdown; the aftermath of Jamie Lynn's pregnancy; and how the family has tried pulling together to recapture a sense of hope and purpose.

    Through the Storm, says Lynne, is "the story of one simple Southern woman whose family got caught in a tornado called fame, and who is still trying to sort through the debris scattered all over her life in the aftermath. It's who I am, warts and all, with some true confessions that took a long time to get up the nerve to discuss."

    Customer Reviews

    Better Than I Expectedby HeatherReads

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    November 20, 2008: From all of the hype on the news, I expected this book to be 2 things: 1)A Parenting book and 2)A book that dished all of the dirt on Lynne Spears' children. I was thankful to find out that it was neither.

    This is a book by a woman who wants the world to see her family through her eyes. She wants to have you (the reader) see that she did the best she could with her children and allowed them to be themselves as she walked beside of them in life.

    She didn't dish out any tabloid style dirt on her children but rather painted them as real people who would like nothing more than to live a normal life without people taking advantage of them. I found myself empathizing with Lynne in her plight to help her children achieve their goals but getting caught up in allowing others to make decisions for them that she either didn't understand or agree with.

    I found that the book was refreshingly honest and drew me into seeing the Spears family as just that...a family.

    Through The Storm a Painful Readby cjewel

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    November 16, 2008: One thing Through The Storm is not is a book on parenting, so get off that dead horse right now. It's more a mother?s explanation of her family, albeit her very notable family. Mrs. Spears recounts her life and marriage and, as you might imagine, the birth and raising of her children. She touches on the large moments in their lives, but keeps the focus on her perceptions and reactions to the events. To its credit, Through the Storm is not a Tell-All in disguise, and it does offer a perspective of events that I suspect is absent from the frantic reporting on the Spears family. And yet, the book is still very much about Britney Spears and, to a lesser extent, Jamie Lynn.

    The story is, in essence, both inspiring and tragic. A young woman from very humble beginnings ends up with a daughter whose talent changes all their lives, and not always for the better. There is indeed a dark side to what was a fairy-tale rise to fame. As to any claims that Mrs. Spears pushed Britney into her career, I can only say that long before Mrs. Spears attempts to address the issue, it was plain to me that Britney Spears was one of those children who did not need to be pushed. There are simply kids who are like that. From an early age, they burn with passion, whether it be for writing, football, science, or, even, singing. Given what she had on her hands, Mrs. Spears did a remarkable job.

    That said, I had a lot of trouble getting through this book. It was often painfully difficult to read. Thankfully, it's not very long (206 pages). This book offers no personal insight whatsoever, no sense that its author has thought deeply about anything. It's written in such a simplistic manner that by the end of chapter one I wanted to tear out my eyeballs. That didn't change until the final two chapters, which were quite riveting despite there being massive logical gaps in the narrative.

    There's no meat to this story. It's vapidly written and even more vapidly told. If Mrs. Spears has anything but superficial insight into herself or her children, it's not presented in these pages. Both girls are held up as idealized, sparkly and numbingly saccharine Stepford-esque daughters. You'd think her children were nothing but sweetness and light during their entire childhoods. And how could that be? They grew up in a house with an alcoholic father, where money was tight and their mother was doing whatever it took to keep them together financially and spiritually. Everyone involved in such a family pays a price, fame or no fame. And that's without the incredible stress of Britney's notoriety.

    Through the Storm offers a perspective missing from the sensationalized reports of the Spears family, but unless you don't mind reading a book written at a fourth-grade level, this is a pass.


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