Pretty Happy: healthy ways to love your body

Book by Kate Hudson

Review by Heidi Hope

October 5, 2025 (San Diego) - Pretty Happy is a New York Times best-selling self-help book written by my favorite actress, Kate Hudson. She thoughtfully researched each area and provided a variety of questions to ask, as well as suggestions to reference and ideas for carrying out each lesson to take better care of ourselves.

The book cover has a picture of Hudson smiling, which demonstrates the book’s theme of self-care and staying happy.

Hudson worked with countless professionals and quoted many books and resources to be able to craft this inspiring extra hand to help many women out there take care of themselves and stay continuously healthy and happy. Furthermore, she also included many fun pictures of herself throughout the book that displays each activity tailoring to the overall theme of self-care and day to day happiness, which made each chapter stand out and more engaging to read. 

There are many things Hudson shared throughout this book that I loved and appreciated learning about. However, the quote that stood out to me the most is:

“We can direct our thoughts. We can shift them from negative to positive. It's commonly accepted that when we harbor the negative, we get the negative. When we build the positive, we get the positive.” (Hudson, 63).

This quote is inspiring and empowering to me, because it encourages me to continue maintaining a more positive outlook on my day to day, so that I can see all the goodness and find more joy in this world.

Furthermore, Hudson shared a tip on meal-prepping and cooking with productivity that is fascinating to me: bulk-cooking and using fresh food.

“However, eating fresh food instead of food out of a box is a part of the effort that has to go into changing your lifestyle. What I do is cook in bulk one day a week. I also understand that many people don’t live near grocery stores that offer a lot of fresh produce and that good fresh produce tends to be expensive. In such cases, I recommend seeking out larger superstores such as Costco and Target- both of which have increased their offerings of frozen organic fruits, vegetables, dairy and lean meat.” (Hudson, 106 & 108).

Through this quote, I now gained another idea of how to stay efficient in my day to day and be productive in my meal planning, which is to set aside one day a week to cook by making meal plans for the whole week and prepping ingredients to cook accordingly. This is quite a surprising idea that I’ve never heard of and would actually love to execute in my daily life, hopefully whenever I can afford my own apartment with a steady kitchen access. 

Overall, I am so thankful to have read this book, which is one of my most favorite self-help books I have ever read. I am glad to have discovered so many fascinating tools to learn more about my body and explore how else to take better care of myself in terms of what to eat, how to keep a healthy mentality along with activities I should focus on to bring myself joy and keep myself happy. Thanks to Kate Hudson and this book, I feel more enlightened and driven to love myself more by only focusing on what is healthy for me and what makes me smile.

Pretty Happy is an inspiring book that I am pleased to recommend to many women of any age to read, because I am confident that it would be an incredible helping hand for many women to take good care of themselves daily.