jfalslev94 's review for:

Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery by Catherine Gildiner

3.25

dark informative sad medium-paced

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Good Morning, Monster was a heavy read. The book follows five patients who endured extreme trauma and shows how they worked through it in therapy. Their stories are intense, sometimes hard to believe, and often tough to sit with. There’s a lot to admire in their resilience and the way Dr. Gildiner unpacks how the mind copes with pain. At the same time, I sometimes felt the book leaned too much on the most shocking cases, almost as if the darker the story, the more it proved her point. I would have liked to see a mix of struggles, not just the most tragic. Still, hearing both the patients’ growth and the psychologist’s own missteps made it a worthwhile read, even if it wasn’t always easy to get through.