Review #37
Being and staying safe is a topic that is dear to me, and as I’ve yet to cover a book written specifically on the topic, I decided to pick one out of the JKP catalogue to review.
This book is split into three sections, of which the first one, making up about a third of the book, is good general reading for everyone that is one of the stronger parts of the book, and expanded upon, would make a good book on its own – on building a support network, setting boundaries, and some basic rules (including self-love and self-acceptance). Things that help us life healthy lives.
The third and relatively short part is about trauma recovery in general, and is also quite generally applicable to everyone and all sorts of trauma and how we can recover from them, and the importance of not blaming oneself for bad things that have happened to them.
The bulk of the book is in the second section, divided into chapters of various lengths. It uses plain language in explaining what is and isn’t appropriate, in terms of intimate relationships and bodily contact (touching, kissing, sex), and building on the section on boundaries, how to identify if someone is acting inappropriately, or in a way that we do not want or are not ready for, and on being prepared to say no, or to deflect to something that one is more comfortable with.
Overall, this is a solid book on setting boundaries in regards to one’s body.
While we should not judge a book by its cover, its title is something that one would expect the author to give careful consideration – how do they feel their work could be best represented? The title here is one that seems rather wide encompassing. The author acknowledges that there’s much more they could have written about, and considering the title, I am surprised that the book doesn’t cover some basics of safe dating (such as not going over to someone else’s place or inviting someone over on a date until you know them well, or how to get out of a bad situation, things which if avoided could result in minimizing the risk of running into the bad situations described in this book), nor does it cover how to identify non-sexual abusive situations (e.g. emotional abuse or financial abuse). In that sense, the book does not live up to its title, which in my opinion seems to be exaggerated in scope to get more sales, and that is unfortunately going to result in a deduction from me in my rating.
That being stated, the book does cover a relatively delicate topic and I acknowledge that it’s not an easy one to write, especially as the author is in part drawing from her own experiences, and so I applaud her bravery in doing so.
Score: 5.0/6.0
