The book is not without merit. There might be little new here, but, the Covid skim aside, it covers the territory well, corralling a range of chiefly secondary sources. Paddles the cat gets a chapter. There are some good sentences. I liked especially: "Cheese is an Ardern passion." Most of the important relationships are covered, sometimes movingly. There is an energy and drama in the telling of Ardern's first day leading the Labour Party. This is not a book aimed at New Zealanders. International audiences will probably enjoy it, if they can't get hold of Madeleine Chapman's book.

And I don't take issue, either, with the overarching thesis. Ardern is an unusually empathetic leader. She has shown an extraordinary ability to deploy compassion and steel in dealing with crisis. It's really no wonder there's that queue of people wanting to write about her.

It's just the whole exercise is so utterly uncritical, fawning, cloying. At every other page, my shoulder blades clenched together. The repeated references to "Aunty Jacinda", as if that’s something people say. The weird elisions. Not just Churchill, but also: "Through Ardern, New Zealand has shown a kind of moral leadership that it once did in granting women suffrage." Or: "Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern may well be remembered in much the same way as her hero, the great Ernest Shackleton from the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration."

To be fair, Supriya Vani is not pretending to write anything but a laudatory, adoring book. In a post published on "Writer's Digest" last week, she offers her advice on "How to Write a Biography of a World Leader". The very first step is this: "Before writing the biography, make sure you can resonate with the qualities of the leader to ensure you're writing a positive biography." No doubt, she's done that. "Awkward" doesn't begin to cover it.

‘An inspiring read … One of the most striking features of the book is its political fair-mindedness, its generosity of spirit … This is the core of the narrative: that Jacinda Ardern has led through empathy, breaking the mold of New Zealand political culture and blazing a trail for women in leadership.'

'This readable, admiring biography will appeal to readers interested in women's expanding role in politics and the emergence of an empathetic "feminine” governing style that the authors argue Ardern exemplifies.'