This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Free Book Program, which is open to all readers and is completely free. The author will provide you with a free copy of their book in exchange for an honest review. You and the author will discuss what sites you will post your review to and what kind of copy of the book you would like to receive (eBook, PDF, Word, paperback, etc.). To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email.
This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Review Exchange Program, which is open to all authors and is completely free. Simply put, you agree to provide an honest review an author's book in exchange for the author doing the same for you. What sites your reviews are posted on (B&N, Amazon, etc.) and whether you send digital (eBook, PDF, Word, etc.) or hard copies of your books to each other for review is up to you. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email, and be sure to describe your book or include a link to your Readers' Favorite review page or Amazon page.
This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Donation Program, which was created to help nonprofit and charitable organizations (schools, libraries, convalescent homes, soldier donation programs, etc.) by providing them with free books and to help authors garner more exposure for their work. This author is willing to donate free copies of their book in exchange for reviews (if circumstances allow) and the knowledge that their book is being read and enjoyed. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email. Be sure to tell the author who you are, what organization you are with, how many books you need, how they will be used, and the number of reviews, if any, you would be able to provide.
Reviewed by K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite
Reckless Grace: A Mother's Crash Course in Mental Illness, by Carolyn DiPasquale, is a work of non-fiction in the memoir and health issues subgenres suitable for the general reading audience. The book is a mother's account of her daughter's struggles with her mental health, written reflectively with the help of her daughter's journals after an overdose claims her life. Struggling to understand how she and multiple trained medical professionals failed to notice three major mental illnesses, the author contrasts her own limited observations with the harder truths found in the pages of the journals.
Quality memoirs cannot exist without a certain degree of openness from their writers in discussing the challenging and emotionally damaging parts of their lives. However, there is a degree of rawness beyond that which DiPasquale has permitted readers to see by opening her daughter's journals. In so doing, this story of a young girl's struggles transcends a simple accounting of emotional events to become an essential chronicle of a real-world struggle against personal demons. The balancing of the author's account of her daughter's struggle from the outside looking in, shown against the daughter's authentic journal entries, which chronicle for the reader what has really been happening in her life and mind, was beautiful in its simplicity and execution and helped bridge the gap between the torment of mental illness and what the outside world sees. Overall, Reckless Grace lays bare the pain of not seeing an invisible illness when a loved one suffers from it. After reading this, I truly felt that it placed me in a better position to support friends and family members who are suffering.
