Your weekly dose of misery (Take A Break)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	Take A Break
Date:	30/01/09 (175 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some good articles amongst all the depressing stories, nice readers photo section

Disadvantages: Too depressing, good news is not often in this magazine, poor problem and medical pages

Never have I read a magazine so stuffed full of human suffering, I read Take A Break from the very first issue and gradually it dawned on me that I don't very much like reading about people's heartaches and dire medical problems. I carried on buying it for a while because of the excellent competitions they run, of which I've been a winner a few times over the years, but no more. I've had it with the whining reader submissions, the short stories are rubbish now and if I read the story of one more poor child struck down by illness then I think I may do something silly.

Of course I am certainly not belittling the suffering of others, indeed as a Christian I feel enormous empathy for some of the people featured in Take A Break but why can they not indulge our love of good news and report on happier times in peoples lives for a change.

Take A Break is heartache in print form, consider those awfully depressing true life books and condense them into a few paragraphs and there you have the usual layout of this magazine. I flicked through an issue in the doctors the other day and can honestly say it hasn't changed one iota and the core of the magazine is still stories based on misery. The headlines for the articles say it all: "Goodbye My Darling Mummy" was about a woman who had craved children for many years only to be struck down by an aggressive cancer not a month after giving birth to her precious baby, "I Said Stay" was equally depressing being about a teenage mother who was left distraught after becoming involved with a violent stalker who eventually went to prison for trying to burn her alive.

The bulk of Take A Break is made up of single page or, if you're really unlucky, a double page real life story. Some are quite heartwarming such as the recent series of articles based around a little girl who recovered from meningitis and the magazine is now following her as she becomes accustomed to life with prosthetic limbs.

As well as the real life stories there are problem pages featuring the advice of various doctors, general advice on keeping well and information about any specific health issues we are facing at the moment. I find the advice given rather bland and don't believe that the problems are really sent in by readers, I could be wrong but if someone finds a lump in their breast then surely they would visit the doctor rather than wait weeks to see what a magazine is going to say about it.

Also horoscopes, readers photographs and beauty advice is given. The photographs are usually very amusing and show either old folk, men, pets and babies in strange and amusing poses. If you send your own photograph up then you will get paid if it's printed in the magazine, I'm not sure how much money you will receive but something in the back of my mind is saying £25 which isn't bad for the price of a stamp.

My favourite sections in Take A Break are 'Car Boot Sale Tales' and another page which deals with any money saving brainwaves readers may have had. These take the form of short letters to the magazine along with photographs of either the brainwave or the car boot sale information. There are some very clever readers out there and I've taken on many of the tips, including using old car tyres painted in bright colours as unusual planters for my garden and making a very personal peg bag from my granddaughters very first dress which she wore on the day she was born. Again, any published submissions are paid for and these sections pay very well with I think £50 up for grabs if you send in a story and a photograph.

The competitions featured in Take A Break are excellent, you can win anything from a spice rack to an all inclusive holiday to the Caribbean. All are in the form of crosswords, wordsearches and other similar puzzles which are very easy to complete. You then fill in all your competition answers on one form and post it to Take A Break or transfer your answers to their online competition form. I have personally won a few items over the years but nothing for a long time now which is probably because the magazine has such a huge reader base that the chances of actually being lucky enough to win anything is now minimal.

Take A Break costs around 70p from anywhere that sells magazines, personally though I'm at the stage of my life where I want to read good news and not the horrific tales Take A Break tell me each week so unfortunately I won't be buying it again and will stick to my Chat and Best magazines.

Summary: More depressing than an episode of Eastenders!