After growing up in an abusive, violent household, Lisa escapes and moves on in an attempt to forget the horrors of her childhood. She is relatively successful in doing this until a news story about a murder/suicide brings it all rushing back to her. In an attempt to deal with this new, devastating situation she takes a trip to Greece and Crete to try and understand her father better and meet the family that she’s never known. This was an interesting memoir that was separated into two different aspects of the authors life. The reader is taken through some of the more difficult parts of her childhood in the beginning and then is with the author as she works through her feelings and tries to make sense of the tragic situation surrounding her father’s death. This was a well written memoir that makes the reader really feel all the emotions that the author is experiencing during the different times of her life. It was a bit heavy at times but was more uplifting towards the end when she finally meets her father’s estranged family in Crete and finally achieves the closure she so desperately needs.

The memoir by Nikolodakis enthralled and troubled me at the same time. I became emotionally immersed in her beautiful words and could relate to her problems. But I yearned for a more in-depth look at her father's background and a deeper excursion into her family's history. But any disappointment was dispelled by Lisa's amazing fortitude and George's encouragement. Knowing the young girl's future was in the capable hands of her loving family gave me comfort.

An emotional memoir about a woman who survives a horrific childhood. Lisa moves away and tries to overcome her past. Until, an extremely sad event occurs and she has to deal with the fall out of it. She turns to her father’s family to try find answers and to figure out why she had to endure so much. A story about resilience and self-restoration. A moving memoir.

Disclaimer: Thank you NetGalley and Little A for this review copy and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC.

I do not tend to give memoirs a rating, but as I have to I will go with 3 stars. This book was hard. It was heavy with many trigger warnings. Lisa made me feel so many feelings. Would recommend, but with caution.

Please check trigger warnings prior to reading, but definitely worth the read! I typically don’t like to put star ratings on memoirs because it should always be a 5 star as they poured their heart out. That being said, even if this wasn’t a memoir I would give it a 5 as it was well written. It was hard to read so it took me a while (my father resembles the father written about)

Trigger heavy but written well. This was a tough book to read, and I had to put it down every so often and take a break but I don't regret reading it.

A memoir is rarely just a rehashing of someone's life or a detailed account of big moments strung together. Most of the memoirs I've read have a central theme that weaves in and out of the author's narrative. Some are more light-hearted and others carry the weight of darkness. This particular memoir falls into the second category, though that was clear from the synopsis.

I knew that I would find this memoir fascinating at least, but I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. Sprinkled throughout Nikolidakis's recollections of her childhood and young adult life were moments of real personal clarity in regards to mental health that many people will resonate with. Having struggled with different traumas and a lifetime of anxiety & depression, I found myself highlighting sentences (and even entire passages) that spoke to me.

Most of this memoir about quakingin the shadow of an abusive father was compelling. The author’s recounting of growing up terrified, yet still desperate for the love and approval, of him was frank and heart-wrenching. It’s immeasurably sad how many memoirs describe years of people hating themselves and self-destructing because of other’s sicknesses.
After her father goes completely off the rails, the author begins searching for some kind of, I don’t know, finality? understanding? absolution?, and embarks on a pilgrimage to Greece, her father’s homeland. This is where the book lost me. Not only did things slow down quite a bit, but this whole section (pretty much the last quarter of the book) just seemed contrived. It was like she knew she was going to write a book focused on her crazy dad and thought a grand gesture like this would be a great way to end it. Her frequent references to The Odyssey and attempts to parallel it did not go unnoticed.
The first three quarters of the book were strong enough that I decided not to dock it a star. If half stars were an option, though…
Thanks to #netgalley and #southernindianareviewpress for this #ARC of #noonecrossesthewolf by #lisanikolidakis in exchange for an honest review.

I do not normally read memoirs but this one caught my eye from the cover and title. I have come to realize I have conflicting feelings about this book. I like the storyline because it is in fact true but I also feel that people will perceive this wrong. The author being open and honest about their life story makes me have faith in the world that one day people will be able to share their traumas with one another to help grow beyond what they know. Since this writing style differed from what I normally read I found that some pieces of this book just fit better than others. Some parts I was very interested in and others I really didn't want to continue reading like I normally do. It took longer to finish this book compared to others. I will recommend it to my followers who read memoirs a lot but I don't think I would reread this.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of No One Crosses the Wolf by Lisa Nikolidakis.

First off, great title! Catches the interest immediately. This is a true story about the author's search for healing after discovering that her dad has just committed a murder/suicides, leaving Nikolidakis left with the emotional wreckage. She's not surprised that her dad committed this horrific crime, growing up with him was a nightmare.
Perhaps a trek to her roots in Greece will answer some questions.

This was a harrowing read, but so interesting. My hat goes off to anyone that is willing to retell their stories of their own personal hell, and I especially appreciate how hard she worked to heal.

The book got slow in a few places, and I was lost every now and again, but it is still definitely worth the read.

This book was everything I wanted it to be. It had me turned pages without even realizing. It was so good!

No One Crosses the Wolf is a beautifully written memoir. After enduring an abusive childhood at the hands of her father the author is glad to have survived. Then he does the unthinkable to his girlfriend and family. This brings on terrible guilt that maybe she should have done something to prevent this. The author Lisa Nikolidakis travels to Greece to try to find some answers.

A 4.5 star read.

Credibility: 10, the author is quick to point out that her lived truth is not the same lived truth of others (as there's no such thing as objective truth), and to acknowledge her flaws in thinking and behavior. I have no reasons to doubt the factual statements surrounding her father's murder-suicide, and everything else has the ring of believability.

Authenticity/Uniqueness: 8, I don't read a lot of memoirs but I expect this isn't the only one written by a woman who was abused by her father, who turned out to be a murderer. Not much time is spent ruminating on the criminal's intentions or mental illness, which is appropriate- this is a memoir of self destructing and spiraling and then taking the risk of trusting one's intuition and selfness, which in this case led to healing.

Writing: 8, the author parallels The Odyssey throughout (appropriate both because she's Greek and because her story and The Odyssey involve a lengthy period of trials and tribulations before finding home), which was a nice contrast to the running theme of abuse (by others and by herself toward herself). I liked that she was honest about the struggle to hold contrasting truths about someone (that someone can have good memories alongside the bad, that a parent can be loving in some instances and terrorizing in others). And although my traumas are very different to hers, I found the writing accessible enough to feel a kinship (especially along her paths of self-destruction and toxic dependence in her 20s).

Personal Impact: 7, I don't think I'm taking much away from this, aside from feeling less alone in my own journey toward healing. The author's childhood was tragic, her future is hopeful, and it's always nice to see someone emerge from darkness into creating and seeing their own inner light.

Intrigue: 9, as terrible as the events were, I did find myself reaching for it (and finished it in two days) with the need to know what happened. It's interesting to me that the author was able to keep a line of tension throughout, given the story was basically told chronologically and from the synopsis we know that her father committed a double homicide-suicide (for which there's no closure or even speculation on motive, aside from his being a sick man, and a total lack of intervention or awareness on the part of everyone outside the family).

Logic: 9, it's a memoir, so it follows the subjective experience of the narrator and her own memory, without needing to cite resources.

Enjoyment: 8, I would've loved to understand what happened to turn the author's father from an ambitious young Greek man into an abusive father and husband, and then ultimately a murderer, but this is real life and real life contains very little closure or linear logic. It also contains plenty of guilt from survivors of violence, and those who didn't see or believe the victims. So overall, this book broke my heart at how cruel the world is while also giving me hope that even the survivors of brain-breaking trauma can (with the right resources and time) heal into loving, self-aware people.

*I purchased this ebook and then received a second copy for free from NetGalley, for the purposes of a review. This in no way influenced my impression of the book.

A memoir of family abuse and finally coming to terms with it. Lisa had the definition of a horrible childhood. When she is an adult, she gets a call that changes her world forever - her dad has died in a murder suicide, after killing his girlfriend and her daughter. Lisa then has to grapple with her past and try to understand why he was the person he was.

This book is heavy but well written. I wish there had been some sort of epilogue post-Greece.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Yet another in the long list of recent memoirs about traumatic, abusive childhoods, yet I continue to find them interesting. Each one has its own spin. The uniqueness in this one is that her abusive father has murdered his current partner and her daughter (that's not a spoiler - it opens with that).

I read this while also reading What Happened to You, and it was interesting to compare Lisa's emotions with the effects of childhood trauma discussed in What Happened to You.

She has a remarkable way with words - which may be too descriptive for many readers. She is able to explain what I would think of as unexplainable.

"There I drank and drank until I flooded my brain enough to put the memory of that little girl on a raft, one that floated into a dark estuary of my mind, one I'd wall in behind a psychic dam. Repression is a beast. It yanks the curtains shut on anything too hard to face and leaves in its wake nothing but darkness."

In childhood, Lisa receives a set of Encyclopedia Brittanic books, so the book has references to words she looks up throughout her experience. Those references show the vast difference between how the world is supposed to be, and what her life was.

I didn't love the end, but it was her lived experience, so I can't take anything away from that. The place of her peace was surprising to me, and I wish she had used her talent for digging into her emotions to attempt to explain it a bit more.

Thanks to Netgalley for this book. (I also purchased the audiobook and did half and half.)

This is not an easy read of the writer’s experience of child sexual abuse and the ongoing trauma impacting her adulthood. Also difficult to be critical of somebody’s courageous sharing of their experience. Some reviews have commented on the length and detail needing to be cut and not liking references to definitions from the Brittanica Encyclopaedia weaved throughout. While I agree it may have benefited from some tighter editing, this is a memoir of trauma and abuse, a very personal story, and I don’t think it’s fair to critique it like a literary novel.

Beautiful but horrible story. Writing was superb. Must read.
Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free, it has no bearing on the rating I gave it.

This is the sort of book you find yourself thinking about long after you've finished it. Yes, it's brutally honest and full of so much pain but at the same time it also leaves the readers with hope. We read of the author's journey from her traumatic childhood to her father's death to finally finding herself and healing. An utterly gripping memoir that is highly recommended.

This book is very hard to read due to the subject matter. The author grew up in an abusive household, and as an adult engaged in a variety of self-destructive behaviors as a result of the trauma she suffered. When she found out her father had murdered his new wife and step-daughter before taking his own life, she was left to try to take care of all the aftermath of his estate, further compounding her tragic situation. Eventually, she decided to travel to Greece, the birthplace of her father, to attempt to make contact with that side of her family. Her trip turned out to be healing and therapeutic as she connected with aunts and cousins who gave her a sense of belonging that she hadn't ever experienced before.

The story was horrifying and frustrating (as all the adults in her family failed to protect her). The author is very open and forthcoming in sharing her story, but it is so unpleasant to read about all the terrible things that were done to her, and all of the subsequent things that happened before she was able to admirably turn her situation around. The terrible events of her childhood, where not only her father but many men either abused or sexually harassed her, combined with the message that men and boys can do whatever they like with no limits or repercussions, made for a very depressing read

Traveling home to understand her dead father. This was a lot to read. To believe this was someone's actual life. I can't imagine how Nikolidakis felt writing her memoir.

Lots of trigger warnings made it difficult for me to love this book as much as I hoped I would. It's still excellently written though!