Published: March 30, 2010
Details: Hardcover, 336 pages
Disclosure: Bought on Amazon.com
Summery (goodreads):
At 22, Leslie Morgan Steiner seemed to have it all: a Harvard diploma, a glamorous job at Seventeen magazine, a downtown New York City apartment. Plus a handsome, funny, street-smart boyfriend who adored her. But behind her façade of success, this golden girl hid a dark secret. She’d made a mistake shared by millions: she fell in love with the wrong person.
At first Leslie and Conor seemed as perfect together as their fairy-tale wedding. Then came the fights she tried to ignore: he pushed her down the stairs of the house they bought together, poured coffee grinds over her hair as she dressed for a critical job interview, choked her during an argument, and threatened her with a gun. Several times, he came close to making good on his threat to kill her. With each attack, Leslie lost another piece of herself.
I'm obsessed with books about/on abuse. For reasons that may be obvious. A good portion of my own life was dealing with abuse. And at some point, I found myself in an abusive relationship. People on the outside don't understand, they don't know the confusion the fear of what it's like being stuck in that situation. Why don't you leave? If only it were that easy! You constantly feel like your life is on the line with every wrong move you make. Leaving? It's like wishing for death.
Leslie has a great life. She works for Seventeen magazine in glamorous New York. She graduated from Harvard and she seems to have a good head on her shoulders. More into the book you realize that her home life wasn't so great. Her mother is an alcoholic and her father is a workaholic. But Leslie herself made a good life for herself.
Then she meets Conor. She didn't seem to have much interest in him at first but decided to get along with him (sounds so familiar). At first things are great, he seems to care about her and she stands up for her when her mother starts talking bad about her. But then things start to change. The smallest things would set Conor off, he would never apologize for hitting her or for the things he'd say to her. He'd overreact over the smallest things and compared to his life growing up, he didn't acknowledge the fact that Leslie didn't have it easy growing up either.
Leslie did the right thing by following the police's instructions. I admit I didn't have the strength to file a restraining order and must have been the most nerve wrecking thing to have to go through. At one point they had went to marriage counseling and Conor provided her with a list of his "hot buttons" saying that if "things were going to work, Leslie would have to avoid these topics at night". How the hell is someone suppose to get better if they're not recognizing the problem? I think that one line pissed me off the most in the entire book!
While thing was a good and interesting read and a great awareness book, the thing that I didn't like about it was that it mostly described her family's vacation homes or her grandparents more than the actual relationship itself.
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