eusteph 's review for:

Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System by Cyntoia Brown-Long

4.0

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I have a lot of feelings about this book. The first being that I should probably stick to fiction from now onwards. It was very difficult for me to read this and remember that Cyntoia is a real person and not a fictional character. At times, reading this was like watching a car crash that you really want to pry your eyes away from, but somehow can't. I would say the emotions that ran through my mind as I read her story were similar to what I went through listening to Dirty John. The knowledge I had of Cyntoia's story before reading this book was very much inaccurate, so the truth hit me like a ton of bricks. I admire her perseverance and willingness to turn her life around, but I couldn't help but feel a certain way about some of the things she detailed due to my own preconceived notions about life. One part that was specifically challenging was the constant mention of religion, which is why I think I should have stuck to fiction in the first place because I can't complain about this without feeling like a hypocrite seeing as she is a real person. I would say that I had to force myself to read about 2/3 of this because I refused to DNF it. This isn't to say that the book in and of itself is bad, it just was not for me.