Surviving and working harder.

Publisher: Poignant Press
Pages: 212
Type: Non-Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 979-8-985-60022-3
First Published: 22nd March 2022
Date Reviewed: 16th March 2022
Rating: 5/5

On Christmas Day when Natasha was 16, her mother threatened to kill her with a butcher’s knife. It was the continuation of a pattern of abuse that had been happening Natasha’s entire life and that day she called 911 and laid the first stone towards independence. Experiencing what she had and surviving, she began a young adulthood full of life and progressed to an incredibly successful adulthood that would see her in her musical element and, later, the founder of a company with a great many well-known clients and a position on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies. This is her story.

Relentless is a wonderful tale of breaking the odds, beginning with suffering that climbs towards a glorious success that will lead to many smiles of reader happiness as you see Miller go from strength to strength and, in its turn, inspire a great many people.

Miller’s book is told in an easy conversational prose sectioned into chapters titled after her music. (If you’re an audiobook lover, this may be one for the headphones – the audiobook includes music.) It centres around her successes in the music industry as a classical violinist (and leader of a number of quartets) and jazz singer as well as her entrepreneurial self, the founder of an event production company.

(As to the editor here, it’s worth noting that Miller wrote the book herself with assistance in the editing process by Jamie Blaine later. Worth noting because of the ‘with Jamie Blaine’ included on the cover – Blaine also wrote an introduction for the start of the book.)

There are trigger warnings in the first pages – suffice it to say, this book may not always be a comfortable read but it’s an important one. Miller has experienced an amount of hardship that makes her successes all the more remarkable, and they are going to be relatable to many people. To talk of just one, the abuse Natasha suffers from her mother shows how poorly such situations were dealt with in decades past, decades that aren’t that long ago, allowing us to note how far we’ve come since then – yes, definitely – but, most importantly, the stories may well serve as a support to those who have gone through or are going through similar. Whilst the internet and more open lines of communication in general have made surviving abuse more likely, and more young people are able to identify that they are being abused earlier in life than generations past, Miller’s book adds a new voice to those testimonies that will most certainly resonate with individuals and help them on their journey, and her later successes are important examples of a person being able to move past the identity forced onto them, and getting out.

That is one of, if not the, most crucial thing about this book in terms of its value for readers.

And I say ‘one of’ because of course there is much more to this book. A music lover, obviously particularly orchestral-minded or jazz-minded but really any one, will find a great deal of enjoyment in Relentless. Miller’s career as a singer and her work as a violinist is incredibly exciting to read about – the beginnings and the way she thinks outside the box, the music itself and the events she plays (she’s sung the national anthem at a sports match and performed with Clint Eastwood in the front row) will be like music to your ears, if you’ll pardon the pun. Her journey to record and those she works with top it off.

And then of course comes her event production company, Entire Productions, in which she pivoted from music to something that encompasses music as one part of it. There is a good amount of information here, both on its beginnings (one of the best examples of thinking outside the box this reviewer has heard of) and on the runnings for the many years of its existence up to and during the Covid pandemic.

What Relentless is, then, is a tale of remarkable strength and determination in the face of catastrophic issues, and what it does is show what can be done, offers hope to people starting from similar circumstances, and provide what is a very enjoyable story of progress combined with a real grounding in the reality that is often in the background unseen. A lot of people would likely refer to Miller’s successes as ‘so lucky’, a term that all too frequently dismisses effort and time – as this book reminds us, behind success is sheer will and work.

I received this book in preparation for a potential podcast interview, which has gone ahead.