Facing Our Skeletons

Rating:
Summary: My Impression of "Facing Our Skeletons"
Review: As I was reading this book, my colleagues were very curious as to why I was reading a novel on relationships. Facing Our Skeletons provides a series of excitements, hope, fear, and deceptions that go with the experience of falling in love. The book depicts the story of Stella and her three subsequent relationships with the following gentlemen: Kevin, Michael and Dev. Although Stella has strived to find the love of her life in each of these three men, she has found instead the brokenness of heart and soul.
The book has 124 pages and is broken into 33 chapters. The author has captured both the appetite and the imagination of the reader through each dialogue. She has also proven that she is an accomplished novelist by allowing the story to flow with her command of the English language.
The construction of the book, including its cover, meshes well with its chapters and lends itself successfully to the subsequent drama and suspense of each of the characters. Each dialogue is preceded by an anecdotal which leads the reader to follow the story with ease and clarity. Victor projects the issues and the many intra-personal conflicts that kept lulling Stella into the arms of the wrong partner.
The content of the story conforms to the nomenclature of such disciplines such as psychology, sociology and conflict resolution. Victor presents the characters as individuals who wanted the best out of their relationships but were unable to fulfill their wishes due to their own individual issues. However, Stella was able to overcome the pain of her unstable relationships through self-actualization. Finally, she decided to change her life's priorities by putting God first.
I highly recommend this book to all men and women who are thinking about dating or who are currently dating. This novel offers some prescriptions or ground rules for what to look for in an intimate relationship in terms of red flags. It is specially recommended to practitioners in the field of psychology, sociology and conflict resolution. Although the quality of the manuscript was excellent, I was able to identify two typos. Nevertheless, the credibility of the content of the novel does not suffer since those typos did not alter the meaning of the story. I give this book an "A."

Reviewed by Manes Pierre, Washington DC, August 5, 2004



Rating:
Summary: Powerful Introspection
Review: Facing Our Skeletons begins with Stella, a modern woman seeking the right match. At first, the author shows that Stella begins an ordinary young woman's life into the dating world. With a stable background such as hers, one would think that she was fully equipped to deal with relationship.
However, that was not the case. Throughout the book, Victor shows that there were some glitches in Stella's background (especially in what her mother never taught her about men) that did not equip her for the strong heartbreak that began her path to emotional depletion. When one puts the pieces together, it all becomes clear that every facet of Stella's life affected her relationships, especially after she became emotionally vulnerable from her break-up with Kevin.
Facing Our Skeletons details some very interesting stories that most women will probably not want to talk about even though they identify with them. The book is everything but ordinary. Victor not only talks about the characters, but she also takes us into their mind and helps us to understand why women do the things that they do. With the powerful contents of the book and all the priceless life lessons and "self-therapy" sessions that we get from Stella, I felt cheated that Facing Our Skeletons was not much longer than what it currently is.
Other than this, I can say that Victor put a lot of effort into not only providing the readers with a "good" book, but a "good" book to learn from. Let me just warn you that this is not really a book for a "simple-minded" reader. Victor gets her props!

Rating:
Summary: A Rewarding Experience
Review: Facing Our Skeletons is an excellent book. I felt like the author knew me. I identified with each and every character in the story. At times I cried and at times I laughed. Overall, I was totally inspired.

Rating:
Summary: Must Read!!
Review: I am not usually a reader. A friend of mine handed Facing Our Skeletons to me. From looking at the cover of the book, I just knew that something interesting was on the pages. I was right. All I can say is that everyone should read this book.

Rating:
Summary: reviewer in nj
Review: I LOVED THIS BOOK, I COULD RELATE TO SOME OF THE CHARACTERS, IV'E BEEN IN SOME OF THESE SAME SITUATIONS. IT'S ABOUT LIFE AND LEARNING HOW TO MOVE ON AND GROW WHEN WE NEED TO.
IT'S A MUST READ FOR ANYONE WHO NEEDS GUIDANCE IN THESE TYPES OF SITUATIONS.

Rating:
Summary: reviewer in nj
Review: I LOVED THIS BOOK, I COULD RELATE TO SOME OF THE CHARACTERS, IV'E BEEN IN SOME OF THESE SAME SITUATIONS. IT'S ABOUT LIFE AND LEARNING HOW TO MOVE ON AND GROW WHEN WE NEED TO.
IT'S A MUST READ FOR ANYONE WHO NEEDS GUIDANCE IN THESE TYPES OF SITUATIONS.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing but the best!
Review: I rate this book as excellent. The author, Carmel S. Victor did an amazing job at exposing the innermost emotions of the characters. Facing Our Skeletons captivated my mind with its real life stories of real people who have real character defects that are interferring with their ability to find hapiness from within. Every single character in the book (especially the women) reminds me of my own life or someone that I know. I thought I was the only one who went through certain things. The book caused me to want to take a closer look at my own emotional life and spiritual life and do a little bit of cleaning up in my own closet.

Rating:
Summary: The Trouble With Relationships
Review: Relationships often define our lives, whether they are romantic, platonic, or even family relationships. More than people realize, individuals have the power to control their role in a relationship, and to direct how that relationship is going to work.

In FACING OUR SKELETONS, we meet Stella a woman in constant pursuit of a knight in shining armor. She's an intelligent, beautiful single mom and seems to have what so many women want. But she believes the hype that she needs a man to be whole and since she does not have one, it affects her self-esteem. She hungers for something that does not exist, the perfect romantic relationship.

Stella experiences one bad relationship after another, accepting insensitive treatment by the men with whom she's involved. She is so busy concentrating on pleasing others her relationship with herself suffers. Stella has no idea who she is, and until she knows herself, how can she know what she wants to give or receive in a relationship?

FACING OUR SKELETONS had the potential to be a really great story, but sadly it fell short. It starts out like a novel, but slowly seems to evolve into a self-help book with Stella preaching to readers about what they should not accept in a relationship. Another issue I had while reading this book was that the book was written in first person and there seemed to be no transitional statements. For example, Stella is telling her story and then all of a sudden she is involved in a conversation with a secondary character. This was very distracting to me and took away from the story. However, I did admire Stella. She never gave up on herself no matter what. With stronger transitions and stronger editing FACING OUR SKELETONS could be a good book.

Reviewed by Simone A. Hawks
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers