Review of "The Gifted School" by Bruce Holsinger

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I started reading this book a while ago and couldn’t get past the first chapter. I came back to it recently and once I got past the first chapter, I couldn’t stop reading! There are a lot of characters in this story so I got a little confused at times. I ended up making a list of characters to keep everyone and their relations straight while I continued throughout the book. Holsinger presents each chapter in a different character’s point of view. We hear the story from different angles, whether from a parent or a child, which adds an important element to the story. It would’ve been too 1 dimensional if we didn’t hear this story from the perspective of the children. Ultimately, this story makes the reader question the merits of a “gifted” school or truly even what constitutes as “gifted”. Similar to “Big Little Lies”, these parents tend to be self-involved and focused on how everyone else perceives their family rather than what’s best for their particular child. Holsinger creates a page-turner of a drama and I couldn’t wait to read what happened next. Recommended.

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Review of "Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention" by Donna Freitas

Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention by Donna Freitas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Rating: 3.5

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

TRIGGERS: sexual abuse, stalking, PTSD

“Consent” is a book about telling a woman’s truth. Donna Freitas suffered a form of sexual abuse in grad school and it destroyed her life as she knew it. She tells the reader exactly, step by step, how this person took a calculated measure to infect every inch of her world. She puts the reader into her skin and it made me feel gross just reading about the abuse. It’s exhausting to read on about how much she suffered because she makes you empathize with her so much, even if you haven’t suffered anything similar to it in your actual life. This is an important book to read to hear about consent in the viewpoint of a victim of abuse. Especially, abuse that occurred in the academic world and how universities (and the Catholic Church in this case) respond to reports of sexual abuse. It’s an upsetting story with an important message. Due to its content, this book could be triggering to those who are suffering from PTSD due to abuse in their past. I would recommend this book to those interested in reading on the topic of consent or sexual abuse scandals in university settings. There are plenty of books on this topic but this book provides the most important angle of all. The view of the person who suffers the most from the incident. It’s so important for her to be able to tell her story, so you should listen and know her story.

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