If you are learning your first language in 2014 and are a beginner, Fluent Forever is super useful. In 2026, it is still pretty useful. Unfortunately, if you are looking for insights for advanced learners, you'll find only a little. Wondering how to keep multiple languages from getting confused in your head? Despite the author talking about how many languages he speaks, he doesn't shed any light on that at all.

As with a lot of self-help nonfiction, this book promises a lot. While I don't think the timeframes he mentions are realistic for most people, I do think that he has really useful ideas, if you are willing to put in the work. Don't be fooled by any of the "oh, this is so easy!!" marketing. You aren't going to be fluent forever because of three easy tricks. You are fluent forever because you'll be constantly maintaining your vocabulary. Or at least, that is the impression that I have, since the author doesn't talk at all about what happens once you are pretty good at a language. He does have the occasional note for intermediate and advanced learners, but it is mostly like "just keep working on these same things".

Unfortunately, the book is pretty dated, so there are a ton of URLs, which may or may not work, machine translation is assumed to be awful, and there is no mention of AIs. The remaining information could probably be summarized in a pamphlet.

I'm not saying that this book isn't worth reading, of course. The author has really good ideas about how to memorize the gender of a noun or the usefulness of working on vocabulary specific to your interests. Just be aware of its shortcomings.

There is a small chance that I may go back to this book to look up one helpful tidbit or another. However, even that is unlikely. I was so disappointed by the focus on beginning learners while the author flaunts how many languages he knows but never gives any information about how he maintains those languages or how he keeps them from turning into language soup in his head that I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. On top of that, he talks extensively about his website, which is mainly set up to sell his language classes now and has the info from his book as an afterthought.

Would I recommend this book to others? If you need to learn a language and aren't already taking classes, then yes. However, the amount of work he suggests isn't trivial, so be prepared to set aside a lot of time to work on it.