Jade Bowler, also known as Unjaded Jade, is a studytuber who helps students improve their study techniques via YouTube videos while also documenting her own education and life journey through her vlogs. Her highly anticipated study guide was published in August 2021. 

If the name of the study guide doesn’t capture your attention, then I’m not sure what will. This study guide really is the only one you need in your life. Jade includes an introduction which explains her education journey so far as well as telling us how to use this book. This book is for anyone and, as Jade explains, it is not a one-size-fits-all. Instead, it is ‘an invitation to motivate yourself.’ By referring to her readers as ‘you’, this book forces you to focus on your own goals and what you want to get out of this study guide – it makes us active readers. This is an accessible guide that I feel like, as Jade says herself, I needed during my GCSE’s and A-Levels.

The book includes 13 chapters, which focuses on these areas:

• Motivation
• The Academic System
• How we learn
• Study methods
• Timetables
• Productivity hacks
• Homework hacks
• Habit formation
• Perfectionism and the fear of failure
• Mental health
• The night before an exam
• Before, during and after an exam
• The future you’re studying for

Jade covers everything a student needs to know in order to grow and learn so that you can achieve what you are aiming for out of the education system. Jade does this by affording us not only with her educational journey through GCSE’s and A-Levels and the struggles she faced, but also with how she overcame these. Through showing what she has achieved, it gave me the feeling that I could achieve anything if I set my mind to it. 

Jade’s chatty and personal tone of voice from her YouTube videos is resonant through her writing voice, which is formal when needs be but is easy and accessible to read – you can tell it is written from a student’s voice. She also includes advice from other people, such as Vee Kativhu and Eve Bennett, who are well-known studytubers and good friends of Jade.

Despite the mention of grades, Jade enforces the idea that ‘results day is just a mindset.’ To me, this is one of the most important messages in this book, showing students that results day shouldn’t be this big final destination; it is just the way we think. 

At times, it feels as though this guide is aimed at GCSE and A-level students, but all the core teachings and advice can be applied to any person of any age, which is why I think this book is also relevant to university students. 

The study guide includes some diagrams as examples, and a ‘put into practice’ box so you can put what you’ve learned into practice. This is the sort of book you’d pick up when you need some help with a certain area of your educational journey or studying; it is a book you can pick up and use time and time again. 

Jade recognises your struggles and demonstrates that grades will not show what goes on behind the scenes in people’s daily lives.

Overall, Jade Bowler reminds us that we are by no means alone in this journey to finding ourselves through the education system and that if we follow some of her tips and advice, we may find ourselves achieving our own dreams and goals, just like her. The title lives up to its expectation; this truly is the only study guide you’ll ever need.

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