Author: Dan Hill
Publisher: Sensory Logic Books
ISBN: 978-0-9997416-2-3

“Facial coding provides a strong, viable opportunity to gauge others through the actions evident on their faces, and on-going usage will make the tool even sharper in your own hands,” Dan Hill writes in his book, Famous Faces Decoded: A Guidebook to Reading Others.

This 215-page paperback targets those interested in celebrities and how their facial expressions show their emotions. After several pages of review accolades, a table of contents, and introduction, the book is divided into three parts, followed by an epilogue.

While covering a myriad of well-known personalities who include actors, athletes, politicians, musicians, and more, the book dissects seven core emotions of celebrities using facial coding. The first section approaches anger, happiness, and sadness while the second part spurns contempt and disgust; the final part covers reactive emotions such as surprise and fear. The first two parts include flash portraits of family, romance, and parallel careers, and the book ends with a chapter on lying, a chart of emotions, comprehensive results, notes and sources, celebrity index, acknowledgments, author’s biography, and additional information.

With 23 facial muscle movements, we each reveal consciously and unconsciously our emotional reactions. I like that the author has done extensive research to find out the emotional why, what, and how of 173 famous individuals. I enjoyed perusing the top ten celebrity lists of the most and least of these emotions and how others perceived the individuals compared to their actual behavior or rare showings. I found the four forms of the seven emotions engaging, while the portrait comparisons intriguing.

Those who do not care about the emotions of famous faces will not be interested in this book as it segregates celebrities into different lists. Some may not like that there are no celebrity photographs or facial charts of them showing emotions. Others may feel several of the examples of the same woman’s features overlap and look identical. I found book’s theme contains more of the celebrities’ actions and words, not their facial movements. Thus anyone could come to the same conclusion of their emotional status without using facial coding.

I feel the book could be titled Famous People’s Emotions Decoded as there is little reference to actual facial muscles of the celebrities. Instead, it includes an abundance of quotes or stories about them.

If you are looking for a book that categorizes the emotions of many well-known people into different groups and also has pictures of one woman’s different emotional facial features as tell-all examples, this may be a decent read, but I kept waiting to see portrayed the glint in the eye of a shady politician, a pouted frown of a talented musician, or raised eyebrows of a favorite actor.

Thank you to Bookpleasures and the author for this complimentary book I am under no obligation to review.