A cheerful chronicle of bravery and self-compassion that encourages all readers looking for love.
Goodson discusses navigating dating with a disability.
When the author was 8 years old, she developed bleeding in her brain stem that required surgery. Though the surgery was successful, she was left partially paralyzed on her left side; she had to re-learn how to walk and talk with therapy and carried a lack of self-confidence with her into adulthood. As Goodson entered her 30s, she was eager for love but still hadn’t found the serious romantic relationship she wanted. With the help of life coaches and friends, she realized that her disability wasn’t the thing holding her back—it was her mindset. After years of frustration, the author began working with Londin Angel Winters, an intimacy coach, who helped her to stop judging herself for her disability and lack of sexual experience (“I was judgmental of my history because I thought it was wrong. I thought it wasn’t how I was supposed to be doing life”) and start celebrating her differences. In this book, Goodson shares the insights she has gleaned and frames them for all readers, both disabled and not, who believe that certain parts of their identity are “dating deal-breakers.” In the last section of the book, the author summarizes the principal takeaways from her experience for readers to use on their own journeys. The tone of this book is empathetic and warm; like a good therapist, Goodson instantly puts the reader at ease. As the author shares the lessons she’s learned, they register as authentic because she doesn’t describe them as cure-all solutions that fix everything overnight. (She did not instantly gain a boyfriend, but she did increase her confidence in how she presented herself to the world, which was the real goal.) Often, it feels like Goodson’s stories could be expanded upon to yield deeper insights—for example, she describes the first and one of the last sessions with Londin but not much of their work in between. Still, the overall message is bright and encouraging.
A cheerful chronicle of bravery and self-compassion that encourages all readers looking for love.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9798891386402
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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