Book Review: Not Good Enough Girl

Reviewed by Erica Ball | Content warnings: physical & sexual abuse

Simultaneously heartbreaking and healing—a memoir of neglect, abuse, perseverance, and hope

Not Good Enough Girl opens with a phone call from the author’s mother, who is inconsolable at having discovered that the author wrote a blog about their relationship. 

The blog, “My Mother Committed Serial Marriage,” was one of the ways the author tried to process the lifetime of chaos brought by her emotionally and psychologically immature mother’s struggle to find lasting, healthy happiness.

Sondra R. Brooks’s attempt to process her life through writing is continued in this collection of memories. After that initial scene, the memories bounce back to her early memories of the breakdown of her parents’ marriage when she was five years old and the introduction of a stepfather who would become a major source of trauma in her life. 

Brooks recounts what it was like growing up with a mother who was so fixated on her own lack of self-worth that she not only overemphasized appearance over reality in all things, but also neglected to protect her children from physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. This has resulted in a lifetime of Sondra denying her identity and needs while desperately trying to obtain and keep her mother’s love. Or any love, for that matter. 

The book recounts heartbreaking moments with family, friends, and strangers that contribute to her feelings of unworthiness, especially in regards to her external achievements, attractiveness, and sexuality. It also includes toxic and unhealthy episodes with her mother, her mother’s partners, her own decades-long unhappy marriage to a controlling, unaffectionate man, and the series of affairs with married men she ran to. 

It is only after falling into an over-dependence on alcohol that she begins to admit that her life is not what she wants it to be—to take steps toward sobriety with AA and therapy. When she finally begins to enforce boundaries, find her own identity, and create a new and healthy relationship, she is suddenly faced with previously repressed memories, and the true extent of her trauma becomes clear.

Brooks’s storytelling is practical and straightforward. Events are recounted without either embellishment or euphemism; just the cold hard truth. Very welcome is the occasional glimpse of joy or humor made possible by the author’s strength of character and the fact that she is now writing from a place of safety and contentment. 

Most remarkable is the author’s compassionate depiction of her mother and how she is able to acknowledge and process her negative emotions regarding some appalling shortcomings. It seems as though despite it all, she has been able to create and maintain a healthy relationship with the woman who failed and hurt her. 

Though the explicit focus of the memoir is on the mother-daughter dynamic, it also deals with larger dysfunctional family dynamics within their extended family. Readers interested in family systems theory will be particularly drawn to the differences in treatment between family members. The odd situation of two divorced couples remarrying each other’s partners will grab the attention of those interested in complex and unconventional blended families. 

All readers are cautioned they will be faced with a number of distressing situations including repeated childhood physical abuse, emotional and psychological abuse, sexual assault, extreme maternal psychological neglect, and controlling relationship dynamics. 

Read Not Good Enough Girl if you want a story about overcoming the cycles of intergenerational trauma through therapy and concerted effort—a story about the many ways in which manipulation and control can be repeated in subtle and not so subtle ways. It can take a lifetime to overcome the events of childhood. Though some wounds may scar and never fully heal, recovery can happen and life can be beautiful anyway. 

Thank you for reading Erica Ball’s book review of Not Good Enough Girl by Julian Sondra R. Brooks! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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