Expert insights and recovery guidance informed by a powerful firsthand perspective.
Macaluso discusses how pathological lovers operate and how to disengage from their abuse in this self-help guide.
“It was my personal heartbreak that led to my professional interest in traumatic bonding between lovers,” writes the author, whose first marriage, at age 22, to Jordan Belfort (aka the “Wolf of Wall Street”), was “an utterly confusing and harmful relationship that I later realized was a trauma bond relationship.” In this book, Macaluso, now remarried and holding a doctorate in counseling and somatic psychology, draws on her “decade of dedication to relational trauma research” and shares several (privacy-protected) client stories to explain the “who, what, why, and how” of trauma bond relationships (TBRs). The author describes how pathological lovers (PLs) start off with “sweet seduction,” then commit intermittent abuse and foster a power imbalance, creating “feelings of dependency, tangled with forgiveness and denial” that “emotionally bond you to your intimate terrorist.” Macaluso highlights the traits that put one at risk for TBRs, such as having high conscientiousness, which can lead one to thinking that the PL is “fixable.” She outlines TBR escape strategies, which include “showing no emotions no matter how much your ex-PL insults, lies, or gaslights you,” and practicing self-care and self-compassion while moving toward new relationships and post-traumatic growth. The author is particularly critical of the label of “codependency,” noting, “Law enforcement and the family court system often fall prey to the PL’s manipulative tactics and become complicit in their abusive ploys—yet we don’t slap them with the codependent title.” While the portrait of PLs is both frightening and depressing, Macaluso ultimately offers help and hope for those victimized by them, noting that “most trauma bond victims develop enhanced personal strength and become open to new possibilities as they recover.”
Expert insights and recovery guidance informed by a powerful firsthand perspective.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798886451597
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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
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