Secret sauce before notes/text?

i have last year’s copy of the secret sauce for level 3. since there are not many changes from last year to this year, we can consider it this year’s secret sauce for argument’s sake. for those who went through it last year, do you think that you could have benefited from reading through secret sauce before the notes/textbooks? or do you think that it’s best used for after going through everything in the notes? given the fact that secret sauce is released a few months before the exam and it is designed to hammer in the most important points, do you think that it would be wise to lay off of it? thanks