Review: How To Kill A Narcissist: Debunking The Myth Of Narcissism And Recovering From Narcissistic Abuse

How To Kill A Narcissist: Debunking The Myth Of Narcissism And Recovering From Narcissistic Abuse by J.H. Simon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Melissa's Musings

Narcisissm is an ugly beast.The reason I decided to enter the giveaway for this book in the first place is because there are some people in my life who display narcissistic tendencies, and I'm sure I've been affected by them. So, I was looking for information on how to resolve some of the issues my experiences with these people have created for me.

 While the author does an okay (albeit overly repetitive) job of explaining the cycle of the narcissist and their shame feeding cycle, this book left me feeling disappointed. There is entirely too much repetition of how a narcissist pulls in a "target" shames them, ridicules them, gives them a little bit of love to keep them coming back and then starts the process all over again.

I had a feeling that I might not enjoy this quite so much when there was an actual clarifying sentence in the book that this book was not actually about killing someone. That killed the hope for me. If you have to take time to clarify that, it seems that you're making the assumption that readers aren't intelligent enough to figure that out themselves.

I was hoping that this would focus more on how to overcome the influence of a narcissist, and how to heal from that, since that's what the main claim of the book is. But, it feels like this portion of the book was shortchanged. The information is very general, and not supported by discernible research. The author also doesn't appear to have any formal credentials of their own, which may account for the lack of research.

There is a list of resources at the back of the book, which I appreciated, but I recall only maybe one or two of these being mentioned.

My attention started to wane around page 90. I pushed through because I was curious to see the practices that were going to be explored for the purposes of healing.

Again, these are very general and simplistic. The tone of the book felt very pushy, rather than informative.

If you don't have much experience with narcissim, and are looking for a general place to start, and an easy read you might try this. But, if you're looking for concrete research, or more than general platitudes, this isn't the book for you.

Does anyone have any other books they'd recommend? Or personal experiences they'd like to share on the subject?

*Please note, I won a copy of this book via Goodreads Giveaways.*