Perfect Surprise
As you may have noticed from the book reviews, I don’t easily pick up domestic writers of the “newer generation” (in terms of publication period, not their ages :D) and few of them have left any “wow” impression on me so far. There are exceptions, of course, like the first book reviewed on this blog. However, the percentage of my rigorousness drastically increases when domestic writers tackle topics of motivation, spiritualism, or God-forbid career and/or entrepreneurship advice. The mentality of people from our area (meaning ex-Yu) has a tendency to go in the direction of recycling already known material from foreign authors or bragging about their own success. Of course, there are exceptions here too when it comes to business topics or motivation/self-improvement.
Milica Kljajić is known to me through the social network LinkedIn with her company “Perfect Surprise” which… well… does exactly what its name says. Summarizing in one sentence what exactly she does is quite a challenge… perhaps the closest would be “preparing creative gifts/events for a person important and close to you (whether on an emotional/family or business/professional level) with the goal of awakening beautiful and positive feelings in that person… i.e., to make them happy (cheer them up, encourage them, delight them, rekindle love, etc.).” Don’t look at me funny, you try describing someone’s unusual business in one sentence. 😀
The company name (and now the book) definitely sounds excessive (overconfident) at first glance. However, if you dig a bit deeper into what Milica does (and read the book on top of that), you might get the impression that the name isn’t that far from the truth.
Through her literary debut, Milica tries to share with us her story of how “Perfect Surprise” came to be, as well as what challenges awaited her on a business (and emotional) level while her business was developing. From the moment of making that decision (brave or crazy, you judge) to venture into entrepreneurial waters with an unusual (unique) idea (and that at a time when she was also going through emotional difficulties), first clients and their expectations, gradually bringing in new collaborators, the occasional conflict (betrayal?), balancing family relationships and the (non)understanding of certain friends (and relatives), as well as why she decided to engage in this “craft,” with Milica we follow the challenges of an entrepreneur on a business, but also (which is perhaps often more important) emotional level.
That would be the plot in brief. Anything more than that would reveal too much, and we wouldn’t want that, right?
And as for the writing itself…
I was surprised that the writer managed to extract from me a reaction that’s (for me) very rare when it comes to the “genre” of business or motivational books. And that’s that I caught myself occasionally smiling while reading this book. The first time it happened, I just shook my head. “No, no, no, Milica, don’t play that card with me. Let’s see blood, war, swimming with sharks, pathos, alone against everyone, but in a way that’s brutal, where we can smell blood and fear…” However, you won’t find that here… which is, perhaps, a good thing. 🙂 You’ve probably noticed yourself that a huge number of books about the “entrepreneur’s path” (a martial art also known as “entrepreneurship-do” :D) often have one (somewhat) “predictable” template. You know, that… “from an abusive family, on the edge of poverty, daily walking 50 km always uphill with a crust of bread in the pocket, surrounded by sharks and piranhas waiting for a mistake to tear apart the competition, victory over the system and absolute domination” and similar. Don’t get me wrong, such stories of successful people are (definitely) inspirational and encouraging and motivate action (I’m the first advocate of that), but sometimes it’s nice, for a change, to also read the story of an, so to speak, “ordinary” person from these parts. When I say “ordinary,” I mean in the sense that a good portion of people can easily connect with the author. You know, you live (relatively) decently in this area, but you feel you’re living below your potential… and then some life blows hit you that shake you up good and you ask yourself what next, choose some established path and live hoping everything will go some way… or, perhaps, dare to make a risky move and follow your heart (or intuition… or madness? :D) and believe that life will (again) set some good (but now much more dynamic) course… which seems to be happening to the author.
You know, they tell me that (in a large number of cases) I can assess people well on an intuitive (and logical) level, to “sense” what someone is like as a person (I assume that, accordingly, perhaps my life paths related to helping people will prove to be a good choice). I think I can assess a lot from a photograph too, but it helps a lot to see the person live and hear their voice, at least for a minute or two. When it comes to the written word (especially with this type of book), there’s one challenge. And that’s how much the writer has included truthful stories and emotions, and how much some events have been made up/altered/fabricated (and accordingly the author’s emotions). I’ll go with the assumption (better said, premonition) that we’re dealing with the first scenario here. Based on that, I got the impression that the author is a very emotional person who tries, as much as possible, to rationalize her feelings and try to keep them under control as much as possible, in order to preserve her analytical side of personality… and thereby survive in the world of entrepreneurship. Although she herself says she shed tears while this business was developing, I think she shed many more than we assume (for example, when, perhaps, at night she cries in silence so as not to wake anyone).
Although through the book we get the impression that in her work she’s quite guided by emotions and some romantic idealism, I’m pretty sure Milica isn’t a naive “player” at all. I get the impression that she’s the type of personality who (like everyone) makes mistakes, but much more rarely repeats them, because she tries to analyze everything and look at it from different perspectives… like many bookworms. 😀 But again, it could be that I’m way off in my assessment. I mean, what are the chances of assessing someone based on their first book? Who knows, maybe I was writing about myself without being aware of it (“Eh, don’t be dramatic, now we have to get all introspective because of you too” – note from subconscious).
The writing style is quite easy to read and doesn’t tire you at any moment. Also, if you pay a bit more attention, you’ll notice besides precise grammatical expression also quite creative sentence constructions (also one of the characteristics of people who read a lot, a lot). “Perfect Surprise” reads quickly and holds attention, so it can be read in a short time. It’s quite emotional for a book that has an entrepreneurial note… which is refreshing for a change. As can be seen, I really liked the book and I think everyone interested in entrepreneurship (especially from the emotional side) should read it, and who has some unusual idea for a business in their head.
As I mentioned, I don’t know how much of this is true and how much isn’t, but the fact is that Milica Kljajić has a gift for writing, and “Perfect Surprise” could get its sequel… or maybe even some new novel with fictional characters could be created, why not. 🙂 Moreover, it motivated me to pull my novel(s) out of mothballs and dust them off and maybe finally publish them (“Well that’s nice, finally you write something smart too… I just hope you didn’t mention both mothballs and dust in the same sentence in your writings, because that really doesn’t make sense…” – note from subconscious).
And when I just think that many years ago I jokingly told myself how interesting it would be if there existed some person like a fairy or ninja (or FBI agent) who would collect data about someone and based on that form ideas about what gifts that person would like… and there you go, someone years later was creative and brave enough (and smart enough to research and discover it doesn’t exist) to imagine and realize something similar (“To be honest, Google has been successfully doing this job for the last 20 years… I mean, collecting data and offering what we’d probably like to have… yeah, they didn’t ask us if we agree with it, but my God, those are details…” – note from subconscious).
All in all, a recommendation from me. 🙂
And you, dear reader, have you ever had some unusual idea, and if so, did you try to realize it? 🙂
“Perfect Surprise” website
Book price: Iznenadjenje.com | Delfi
