Andrew Evans

I need to put this up front: this book inappropriately portrays manipulative, love-bombing (please look this term up if you are unfamiliar with it), stalking, and emotionally abusive behavior as romantic or inspiring. I just need to emphasize to potential readers that if a near-stranger insists that they love you, equally insists that you love them back, and, from that fabricated dependence, expects you to excessively sacrifice elements of your life to support their emotional needs, you are in toxic territory. Besides that very important criticism of this book, I agree with other reviews mentioned online regarding its approach of representing the worldy perspective of "being behind everyone's eyes." It was a very literal, and very unsubtle way of drawing compassion for people of diverse backgrounds. Meanwhile, I think that forceful compassion came at the expense of accurately representing the thoughts and experiences of people with these backgrounds/perspectives. In my point of view, the concept had potential, just didn't deliver. And I still cannot get past toxic relationship attributes being portrayed as romantic. We already live in a culture where obsessive "love" is idealized, and this book only further contributes to some really unhealthy expectations in relationships.