欧宝娱乐

It's been said that what makes a truly great author is honesty. An author needs to be honest with their topic, honest with their characters, and above all, honest with themselves. Lori Newman excels in all three of these areas.

Sharing the details of her life was obviously painful for the author, but that pain comes across to us as well, in a powerful way. We feel her fear and confusion as the two men, who once professed that they loved her, join forces to do everything they can to destroy her sense of value, being loved and self-esteem 鈥� her very soul.

The latter half of the book mostly deals with her court battles. I thought this area might be boring. It turned out to be anything but. Astonishingly, Newman's skillful way of expressing herself continued to draw me into her plight, more so than I would have thought possible.

This book deals with a very poignant social issue. There are laws to protect people from physical and sexual abuse. Even so, they can be difficult to enforce and have various degrees of success protecting those who need it. However, there really are no laws, to speak of, that protect one from psychological abuse.

As psychological pain may be just as real and painful as physical pain, psychological abuse may be just as devastating as physical abuse. And yet, how can one escape from psychological abuse in a world that treats this social ill so lightly? That's what Newman's book is all about and why she has written it. This book is not only educational, but a very entertaining read as well. It certainly held my attention.

Newman鈥檚 book is also a warning for young women to be very careful about whom they entrust their hearts to. On the surface, there may appear to be very little difference between a 鈥渃harismatic鈥� individual and a narcissistic one. Indeed, people who have spent so much time polishing and refining the external expression of themselves, their 鈥渇a莽ade鈥�, may be doing so to hide some very unpleasant things beneath it. And, of course, in the intimacy of marriage, this fa莽ade can鈥檛 be maintained for long.

A NOTE ABOUT THE KINDLE VERSION: I purchased this book as an ebook. In fact, if it weren鈥檛 for the Kindle Store's sampling feature, I probably wouldn't have decided to read it at all. On a topic like this, I was afraid that the book might just be someone's vengeful "spouting off" against their ex-husbands. We've all seen people like this, both male and female, who by lying to themselves and others try to pull everything around them, including the social institutions such as the justice system, into their own warped view of "reality". The sample convinced me that this was not the case with Newman.

There are two such individuals in the book, but they turn out to be her ex-husbands, not her. It is this very fact that empowers the justice system to work in Newman's favor. I'm often amazed that these sorts of people don't recognize that the very institutions they are trying to manipulate have to deal with people like them every day. I guess it all goes to show that you should never underestimate the ego of a narcissist! It is this very ego that the judges recognize, leading to the narcissist鈥檚 downfall. Nevertheless, this weakness may be very difficult for someone 鈥渦nder their spell鈥� to recognize, and Newman provides many practical examples of how to break free from their influence.

The Kindle version has a few issues, but nothing that hindered my reading experience. The Table of Contents is inappropriately 鈥渨rapped鈥� (it looks OK if you switch to 鈥渓andscape鈥� or the smallest available font on the Kindle 2), and occasionally you run into two words that have been joined together without a space between them. I recognize both of these aberrations as artifacts of the program(s) that converted the book into the Kindle format. Still, these are very little things and I certainly wouldn鈥檛 want to steer anyone away from the ebook on that basis. I鈥檝e noticed there an earlier Kindle version (by a few days) of the book (same title and author) in the Kindle store. I don鈥檛 know what the difference is, but it鈥檚 probably better to purchase the later version (this version).