Healing from Parental Abandonment and Neglect is a transformative guide that delves deep into the wounds left by early neglect and abandonment. With profound empathy and clinical expertise, Kaytlyn Gillis offers readers a pathway to understand and heal from the invisible scars that have long impacted their self-worth and relationships. This book is not just about recognizing past hurts; it's a hands-on journey toward rebuilding trust, establishing healthy connections, and reclaiming one's true self. Through practical exercises and compassionate guidance, Gillis empowers readers to move beyond the shadows of their past and step into a future filled with safety, connection, and self-assuredness. A must-read for anyone seeking to mend the fractures of their early experiences and cultivate a life of genuine fulfillment.

From page one, *Healing from Parental Abandonment* feels deeply relatable. The book does a great job of explaining how shame and self-blame take root, often shaping self-perception and creating cycles of insecurity and emotional pain. Gillis acknowledges how easy it is to internalize abandonment, making readers feel seen and understood.

The book offers practical tools for breaking these patterns, with exercises and affirmations like *I am safe* to help rewire negative beliefs and rebuild self-trust. It also explores the cognitive dissonance that can come with recognizing past wounds while trying to move forward. While some areas could go deeper, particularly in navigating complicated relationships, this is still a powerful and compassionate resource for healing.

I am thankful for the opportunity to have received an ARC of this book. I feel like the author has genuine experience in this field and is quite knowledgeable. Unfortunately, I am feeling compelled to DNF this book at this time.

I want to be clear, that my reasoning for choosing to not finish this book is not because of the content or information given, however, I do feel like this book should be read through by editors another time. The formatting (at least on the kindle/ebook version) is not well constructed, which makes it hard to read when certain sentences and paragraphs are broken in strange places. There are also some grammatical errors that I have come across which made me wonder if some parts had been poorly translated from another source. The language throughout the book seems to have dialogue as if it had once been a speech and then flips to more of a conversational dialogue within the same section or paragraph. As someone who has read numerous self-help books, I found this one exceptionally difficult to read because I was so distracted by the technicalities within the text.

Overall, the information is wonderful, but the delivery has been poorly executed and seems rushed. I hope that the author can make the necessary changes/updates so that her message can be well received; she's on the right track.