Crazy Love

by Leslie Morgan Steiner

Book Overview

At 22, Leslie Morgan Steiner seemed to have it all: good looks, a Harvard diploma, a glamorous job in New York City. Plus a handsome, funny boyfriend who adored her. But behind her fa ade of success,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312377452
• ISBN13: 9780312377458
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 325 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

One of my new favorite books.

Finally something I could somewhat relate to. This book id defiantly worth the read!

Seriously one of my favorite books!

I love this authors story, her rawness, her honesty. I am a domestic violence survivor and reading her story, seeing her face her truth and actually talk about what she endured? It helped me face my truth and I couldn’t be more happy now. Thank you for an incredible memoir. (Also if you haven’t already, check out another book of hers called “The Naked Truth”. It’s incredible too!)

Great Book

The author did a fantastic job of making the reader feel what she was going through. She is one of the lucky ones that got out before it was too late and had the presense of mind not to have a child with this man.

great read!

This was a very good and inspiring book! The author was brave for telling her story and showing women in abusive relationships that they can move on and be happy!

excellent - a must read for all college women!

this is an excellent book that shows how ANY woman can fall prey to the masterful ways of an abuser - they are cunning and so easy to fall in love with - you will not know what they are until its too late - unless you read this book and educate yourself on the warning signs. a MUST READ for college age women!

Courageous--this book will save lives

I am pretty puzzled by the negative reviews here. "Crazy Love" is a courageous, unflinching look inside an abusive relationship. It is a difficult but well-written, powerful story. Leslie Morgan Steiner does us all a service by illustrating the pattern she experienced in her abusive relationship, especially the small steps her partner took to draw her in--his charm and his neediness, their deep connection, and then the boundary testing and slow escalation of violence. When she did not call his early possessiveness and jealousy into question, he increased his control over her, through isolation by moving to Vermont, financial dependence when Leslie left her New York job, alienation of her family, and then increasing violence. He was a Wall Street financier, she was a Harvard grad and Seventeen Magazine editor. On the outside they looked like they had everything going for them. Behind closed doors, Conor punched Leslie, belittled her, and threatened her, daring her to leave at vulnerable times when she had nowhere else to go. The author admits her blind spot: she deeply loved him and wanted to rescue him from his own violent past as an abused child. It took the realization that he truly could kill her to cut through her denial, call the police, and get help and get away from her abuser forever. Leslie Morgan Steiner paints a full picture in her narrative: her own family had serious dysfunctions. She herself was a recovering addict, just out of her teen years and inexperienced in healthy relationships, who had only recently graduated from college when she met Conor. Her parents had their own divorce drama playing out while this was all going on. Leslie was vulnerable in so many ways and admits how deeply attached she allowed herself to become to Conor, even as he was hurting her. Telling the truth about abuse can be the first step to getting help, and I believe this story will help save lives by allowing other women to examine the truths about abuse, and then take steps to escape the violence. One irony about this book: in many interviews Leslie Morgan Steiner has said that when we talk about domestic violence, she wishes we focused more on why abusers hurt the people they love. Her own memoir can only be told from her perspective, so it is about how she became pulled in and why she stayed for so long. But I applaud both her writing and her continued speaking out about the problem and cycle of domestic violence, which affects millions of American families every year.