An excellent, well-structured, and thorough guide for readers seeking nonmonogamous relationships.
A comprehensive relationship manual focuses on nonmonogamous couples.
Loree uses her experience as a therapist and as someone who is fluid (moves between monogamous and nonmonogamous relationships) to shape the lessons in this well-crafted book. This guide “allows you to avoid pitfalls and find adventure as you build healthy” nonmonogamous relationships. From the beginning, the author emphasizes transparency, consent, and communication as the qualities that are the cornerstone of a strong nonmonogamous bond. Relationship quality, not longevity, is the measure of success that Loree uses throughout her manual. To orient readers, she defines terms such as polyamory relationships(the triad, the quad, the V), primary partners, and hierarchical attachmentswhile underscoring the fact that nonmonogamous bonds can be customized for each person. The book covers how to build trust with partners, practice self-compassion, and cope with jealousy. To strengthen her theories, Loree uses examples of LGBTQ+ and heterosexual couples she has helped in therapy to demonstrate how to handle conflicts that may arise in nonmonogamous relationships. She provides tangible strategies for building vigorous connections, even drawing on her own experiences in a nonmonogamous relationship. For example, when Loree began to feel jealous of her partner’s girlfriend and the fun they had, she made an important discovery. She recognized that she did not have to be everything to her partner. There is no aspect of a relationship that Loree doesn’t cover. She explains how to break down cultural programming, examines how mood disorders and personality can affect relationships, and analyzes different types of attachments. She also guides readers through the coming out process to friends, family, and children. Loree’s tone is professional, compassionate, and informative. Her credibility and expertise as a therapist inform the valuable guidance that she delivers in each chapter.
An excellent, well-structured, and thorough guide for readers seeking nonmonogamous relationships.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-335-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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