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The Call I Almost Missed: 365 Days Without a Cell Phone and What It Taught Me About Love, Presence, and the Lies We Live
Tommy Short’s The Call I Almost Missed is a yearlong spiritual and emotional memoir told as a sequence of short letters to his daughters, and that shape gives the book its heartbeat. The premise is simple enough to hook you fast: a father turns off his cell phone for 365 days after his daughter asks, “Daddy, why are you always on your phone?” But the book quickly grows beyond experiment or stunt. It becomes a running conversation about attention, fatherhood, ambition, fear, faith, and the private ways people drift away from themselves. The letter format keeps the book intimate, and the repeated “What if” chapter titles give it a reflective rhythm that feels less like an argument and more like a man thinking out loud in real time.
What makes the book work is that Short writes with the urgency of someone who knows he’s been sleepwalking and doesn’t want to waste the wake-up call. He’s strongest when he ties his big ideas to ordinary scenes: a bedtime routine, a haircut gone sideways, a walk with his wife, a quiet panic attack, a rainy stop at the park before school. Those moments keep the book grounded. When he writes, “Presence isn’t proximity. It’s attention,” he lands on the book’s central claim in a way that feels real, not packaged. That line keeps echoing because the whole book is an effort to prove it, one family moment at a time.
The book is also a self-portrait of a man shedding identities that once made him feel valuable. Short writes about officiating basketball, speaking work, masculinity, control, and the reflex to stay reachable at all times. That gives the memoir a real arc. It isn’t just about removing a device. It’s about watching performance fall away and seeing what survives. I liked that he understands this process as both tender and disruptive. The book keeps returning to the cost of becoming more honest, especially in marriage, family life, and faith. Even when he gets intense, there’s a real vulnerability underneath it, and that’s what keeps the book from feeling abstract.
Stylistically, this is a devotional memoir with a motivational streak. Some readers will find the repetition calming; others may find it a bit much, but the repetition is part of the design. The book wants to ponder, not rush your thinking. Short’s best image for that approach comes early, when he says, “This book is not a map. Maps promise routes and destinations. But life rarely works that way.” That line explains the whole reading experience. You don’t move through this book to gather a neat system. You move through it to sit with its questions, and to notice how often it asks you to reconsider the life you’re building while you’re busy trying to manage it.
What I liked most is how clearly the book knows what it wants to be: a record of choosing presence on purpose. It’s a father’s testimony, a spiritual inventory, and a collection of letters meant to outlast the season that produced them. By the end, the phone itself almost feels secondary, which is exactly the point. The real subject is a human life becoming more awake. If you like memoirs that lean into reflection, family, and hard-won tenderness, this one has a lot to offer. It feels personal without being sealed off, and sincere without hiding its rough edges.
Pages: 294 | ASIN : B0GNX3WK9Q
The Making of a Warrior of Light: Conquering Pain to Claim Your Power
Theresa Rubi Garcia’s The Making of a Warrior of Light is a memoir that refuses to stay in one lane: it’s a childhood survival story, spiritual manifesto, and practical “keep going” manual braided into one voice. Garcia opens with the blunt architecture of her life, racism inside her own family, neglect, violence, early exposure to sex and substances, and the way hunger for love can shapeshift into self-sabotage, then tracks her evolution into a mother, a relentless self-rebuilder, and eventually the founder of Rubi’s Positive Empowerment. The book is explicit about its intent: don’t pity her; use the story as a roadmap for turning pain into power.
Garcia doesn’t narrate from a safe distance. She brings you into the room with the kid-version of herself who is trying to compute the uncomputable, then shows you how those early equations (fear = safety, pain = love) keep solving for the same misery. What hit me hardest wasn’t just the severity of what happened; it was the candor about the coping: the people-pleasing, the volatility, the chase for intensity, the way “survival mode” can look like personality from the outside.
The second half shifts from bleeding to healing. I liked that Garcia doesn’t sell healing as a scented candle. She frames it as discipline, choice, repetition, and sometimes sheer refusal. Her “Beast Mode” section is essentially a field guide for forward motion, adaptability, resiliency, fearlessness, a “thirst for truth,” and the insistence that even overwhelm can be met with surrender and embodied practices (she talks about going into nature, running, hiking, and re-centering so she can show up as a steadier presence). It’s motivational, yes, but with bite marks: she keeps reminding you that growth is incremental, that habits are built in “micro-shifts,” and that the point isn’t perfection, it’s traction.
This is for readers who want memoir, trauma recovery, and spiritual self-help in the same mouthful: survivors who are tired of being handled with velvet gloves, faith-adjacent seekers who like their mysticism practical, and scrappy strivers who need proof that a past can be an origin story, not a sentence. In spirit, it reminded me of Tara Westover’s Educated, but with more direct coaching energy and a metaphysical vocabulary that aims at empowerment rather than academia. If you’re ready, this book is a match struck in a dark room, and it leaves you wanting to see.
Pages: 188 | ASIN : B0G6VF4DD6
Rocky Mountain Charlatan: A Memoir of Fly Fishing, Love, Faith and Deception
Rocky Mountain Charlatan by Kristin Middleton tells the story of a successful Denver veterinarian who heads up to Estes Park for a fly-fishing lesson and instead gets pulled into a whirlwind romance with Cody, a charming cowboy guide who seems almost too perfect. The book tracks their relationship from that first electric day on the river to a life together in the mountains, then follows the slow slide into control, emotional and physical abuse, and finally the terrifying decision to go to the police and reclaim her life. It is a memoir about love, faith, psychological manipulation, and the long, messy work of healing after trauma, all set against the rivers and ridgelines of the Colorado Rockies.
I found the writing to be incredibly immersive. The early chapters feel like a modern fairy tale in waders. The author’s eye for detail pulled me right into the fly shop, the river, the condo kitchen that smells like butter and rum, the little mountain church where she sits holding Cody’s hand. The prose is straightforward and conversational, which makes the romantic rush feel believable and a little intoxicating. I liked the way the narrative lingers on small sensory moments, like music on a car stereo or the weight of a trout in her hands, because those scenes make the later violence land harder. I did feel the idealization of Cody ran a bit long on the page, yet I also realized that lingering glow is the point. It mirrors how someone in that situation keeps giving the benefit of the doubt long after the red flags are waving. The pacing shifts from dreamy to claustrophobic in a way that felt intentional, and by the time we reach the precinct parking lot, my stomach was in knots.
The book gives a very clear picture of malignant narcissistic abuse without ever sounding clinical. In the author’s note, she names the pattern of idealization, devaluation, and discard, and ties it to research on strangulation and homicide, but inside the story, we experience it as confusion, self-doubt, hope, and then sheer terror. I felt genuine anger at Cody, especially when he cloaks himself in faith and old-fashioned chivalry. I also felt a lot of compassion for the narrator as she wrestles with victim-blaming, self-blame, and the way people around her do not always know how to respond. The thread of faith is handled with honesty. Her belief in God is not a magic fix. It’s a grounding presence that she leans on, questions, and returns to while dealing with complex PTSD and depression. The love for her sister is another strong line through the book, and I appreciated that the memoir honors that support just as much as it calls out the harm.
I would recommend Rocky Mountain Charlatan to readers who want a raw, emotionally honest memoir about surviving an abusive relationship, especially one that looks “storybook” from the outside. It’ll resonate with people who are curious about how smart, capable adults get pulled into these dynamics, and with anyone who has leaned on faith or family to crawl out of a dark season. That said, the scenes of violence and the discussion of strangulation and trauma are intense and could be triggering. If you can sit with heavy subject matter, and you like memoirs that mix lyrical nature writing with hard-earned psychological insight, this one is worth your time.
Pages: 186 | ASIN : B0F2M8YNDQ
Uncovering Amy
Uncovering Amy follows herbalist and coach Amelia South as she tells the story of how she went from a chaotic, abusive childhood to a full-blown mental and spiritual crisis, then to what she calls “true mental health.” The book traces her early trauma, her toxic relationships, her heavy drinking, and her obsessive search for meaning in pagan and Indigenous spiritual traditions. From there she describes hearing an internal voice she names “Robert,” going through exorcisms, wrestling with the idea of schizophrenia or Dissociative Identity Disorder, and finally working with Bryan Redfield’s “Super Team” brain training method to integrate her inner Parent, Adult, and Child into a single unified self. The result is a hybrid of memoir, spiritual testimony, and lay self-help that argues DID is misunderstood and that her method can “cure” it.
The book feels raw and very direct. I felt like I was sitting across from someone who decided to tell me everything, swear words and all. The early chapters about her family, her stepfather’s cruelty, and her string of relationships have a blunt, almost confessional rhythm. Sometimes that worked really well for me. Her anger, shame, and loneliness come through in plain, sharp lines, and I could feel the teenage girl who learned her worth was tied to her body and her usefulness to men. At other points, the storytelling meanders. Scenes with drum circles, graveyard visits, and spiritual chats sometimes pile up.
I admire the courage it takes to frame your own mind as “broken,” lay out the ugliest moments, then insist that healing is possible and that you are living proof. Her focus on self-responsibility, on ending generational harm, and on giving tenderness to the scared inner child felt powerful. The way she gradually recognizes “Robert” as Amy, her young self, and then starts to love that part instead of fighting it, hit me in the gut in a good way. She is confident that the Super Team method works every time, and very sure that DID can be resolved if you do the work she describes. There is also a mix of spiritual explanations, dowsing rods, ancestors, demons, and telepathy.
I believe that Amelia is telling the truth as she understands it, and I respect the sheer effort it took for her to claw her way out of despair and claim a life that feels stable and whole. I also think this book works best as a personal testimony. I would recommend Uncovering Amy to readers who like spiritual memoirs, people interested in alternative or experiential approaches to healing, and survivors who may feel less alone seeing their own confusion and rage mirrored on the page. For me, it is a raw, messy, and relatable story that can spark reflection and hope.
Pages: 220 | ASIN : B0GKJLXPFC
Improvising in Italian
Improvising in Italian is a heartfelt memoir by Jennifer Artley that traces the winding path of a woman who moves to Italy in search of meaning, healing, and perhaps a sense of permanence. The story centers on her family’s relocation to Modena, fueled by a blend of optimism, romance, and idealism, and the personal unraveling that follows. At the core is the difficult departure of her teenage daughter, who chooses to return to the U.S., leaving Artley grappling with loss, identity, and questions about the life she has built. Through lyrical scenes and sharp reflections, Artley threads memories from her nomadic childhood with the chaos of present-day expatriate life. Food, family, and place become the fabric of the tale, stitched together with bittersweet honesty.
Reading this memoir felt like sitting across from a friend at a kitchen table, talking long into the night. Artley’s voice is vulnerable and unguarded. She tells it like it is. What struck me most was her ability to blend humor with heartbreak. One minute, I was laughing at her chaotic car rides through Italy, and the next, I was floored by the quiet grief of watching her daughter slip away. The writing flows easily, but it’s far from simple. She nails those small, aching truths of parenting, how love and guilt and hope get tangled up. I could feel how much she wanted this dream in Italy to work out, and I ached with her as that dream slowly fell apart.
What also stood out was her attention to detail, especially around food and culture. The way she described the tortellini in brodo or the smell of balsamico vinegar aging in attics. But more than just a tour of Italy’s cuisine, the book becomes a meditation on what it means to belong. Artley doesn’t hide her doubts or frustrations. Italy isn’t romanticized. It’s messy, inconvenient, beautiful, and frustrating all at once. That complexity made the memoir land in a very relatable way. Her decision to root herself, despite the chaos, is an act of quiet courage. And there’s a raw admiration in how she holds space for both her own heartbreak and her daughter’s independence.
This book will speak most to people who’ve taken big risks and had to live with the consequences—parents, expats, wanderers, or anyone trying to find home in a world that keeps shifting. It’s not a feel-good story in the conventional sense, but it is a deeply felt one. I’d recommend Improvising in Italian to readers who appreciate memoirs that pull back the curtain and show the vulnerable moments.
Pages: 204 | ASIN : B0DX3Q9NW1
That Guy
That Guy by Larry Hankin offers a vibrant dive into the life of its author, a stand-up comedian turned actor whose journey through the pulsating heart of show business is nothing short of a rollercoaster ride. From precarious beginnings in Greenwich Village to navigating the highs and lows of Hollywood, Hankin intersperses his tale with encounters with iconic figures like John Huston, Lenny Bruce, and Bob Dylan. This autobiography is as much about the grit and glamour of the entertainment world as it is about personal resilience and transformation.
This book is a delightful read, brimming with juicy backstage stories and heartfelt moments that make you feel like you’re catching up with an old friend over coffee. Hankin’s knack for storytelling shines as he draws us into his world, packed with eclectic characters and pivotal moments that shaped his career and personality. The book excels in depicting a wide array of individuals—from mentors and icons to rivals and friends—who influenced Hankin’s career and life. The narrative can sometimes feel disjointed, especially when transitioning from one era to another, which might leave readers wanting a smoother storytelling experience. While the insider anecdotes are fascinating, they occasionally overshadow broader thematic developments, making some sections feel more like a collection of vignettes rather than a cohesive story. The book’s engaging style and rich detail effectively portray the entertainment industry’s challenging yet rewarding nature. Themes of perseverance, identity, and transformation resonate throughout the text, making it a worthwhile read for anyone fascinated by the complexities of celebrity life or seeking inspiration in overcoming their hurdles.
Larry Hankin’s witty and reflective style, along with his ability to draw vivid characters and settings, makes That Guy a notable addition to the autobiography genre. For fans of showbiz tales and personal journeys alike, That Guy offers a unique glimpse into a life well-lived and hard-won victories in the face of adversity.
Pages: | ASIN : B0CW18F4D3
Winning: A Story of Grief and Renewal
Winning: A Story of Grief and Renewal, by Harriet Hodgson, is a moving memoir that delves into the author’s intensely personal journey. Hodgson’s brave narrative offers readers a raw exploration of the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies profound loss, but it also showcases the human capacity for resilience and healing.
Hodgson’s storytelling is both heartfelt and compelling, drawing readers into her world from the very first page. Her ability to convey the depths of her grief is nothing short of remarkable, making it easy for readers to empathize with her pain and sorrow. The book’s strength lies in its authenticity. Hodgson doesn’t hold back when describing the most challenging moments of her grief. She candidly discusses the physical and emotional toll that grief takes on her, from sleepless nights to the isolation and confusion she experienced. Her willingness to share these personal experiences is both courageous and reassuring for those who may be navigating their own journeys of loss and grief.
The title, Winning, aptly reflects the resilience and determination she displays throughout the book. One of the book’s outstanding qualities is the way Hodgson weaves practical advice and insights for those dealing with grief into her personal narrative. While I enjoyed the book, I feel that there were moments when the narrative felt somewhat repetitive, and some readers may find the pacing a bit slow. While the book offers an intimate look at the author’s journey, I would have loved to have had more insight into her emotional and psychological evolution.
Winning: A Story of Grief and Renewal, by Harriet Hodgson, is a heartfelt memoir that offers a powerful portrayal of one woman’s journey through the darkest moments of her life. Hodgson’s openness about her grief and the steps she takes to reclaim her life provide valuable lessons for anyone dealing with loss and searching for hope. This book is a must-read for those looking for a genuine and inspiring account of the human capacity to heal and find renewal in the face of overwhelming adversity.
Pages: 200 | ASIN : B0C2ZSLD29
God is Always There Listening
Under His Divine Gaze is an inspirational personal story and guide to help readers develop their communication skills with the divine. Why was this an important story to share with the world?
Originally, my book didn’t start out as a manuscript; it began with me documenting a profound and miraculous event that transpired while I was on a pilgrimage seeking healing in Lourdes, France. As time passed, I unexpectedly found myself writing about my health trials. Since I also experienced astounding, sacred, and transformative moments during that period, I realized that I should publish my story because I believed it could help others.
I learned that one of the ways we can commune with a higher power is through earnest and devout prayer, which can eventually lead to absolute trust and complete surrender. The result is an inexplicable inner peace. St. Thérèse of Lisieux taught me this through her writings, faith, friendship, and intercession. Another reason I wanted to share my story was to further spread devotion to her.
Through sharing my spiritual memoir, I aspire to provide hope and inspiration to those who are unsure of their beliefs, are either on the verge of discovering their faith, or are already connected to the Divine —so that they, too, will see God’s extraordinary power and that of His angels and Saints.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story, sharing the trials you went through to find your spiritual peace. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
I can’t pinpoint one thing as being the hardest to express. Since my book started out as a personal journal, and writing about my situation became a therapeutic process, I just wrote freely from the heart, recollecting beautiful moments and hardships.
As I edited chapters and excerpts, old emotions resurfaced. Perhaps the most poignant memory was leaving Ruber Internacional Hospital and reliving how I felt as I gathered my files while preparing to leave the doctor’s office.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
I wanted to share the spiritual knowledge that I had attained: God is always there listening, even—or especially—when we don’t think He is; and that He won’t fail us—even if we think He has.
Another message I felt important to pass along was that gratitude can come from what is seen and unseen and arise from circumstances where we wouldn’t think it is possible. Grace and peace can be found as we journey towards God.
I also found it necessary to impart the message that there is much to be gained from learning about the lives of saints. There are patron saints for everything imaginable. Once a connection is made, what can be received from them is extraordinary—beyond expectation!
I hope my reader’s curiosity is sparked by the heavenly signs that I was granted, and that they, too, might seek to connect with God, His saints, and angels who willingly assist us.
After sharing your emotional journey, what is one thing you hope readers take away from your story?
The one take-away I hope my reader embraces is the awareness that they are always under His divine gaze.
Author Links: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
Monique continues to desire answers from heaven, and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux finds a way to deliver. By sending her signature sign—a rose—along with a series of other distinct physical manifestations, Thérèse affirms that Monique’s prayers are heard.
Disheartened and full of despair as she confronts health related obstacles, Monique longs for a divine sustaining force. With Thérèse by her side, she turns to the Lord and discovers complete surrender and the freedom that lies therein. Yearning to further her connection with Saint Thérèse, Monique sets out on a trip to Lisieux. After all, Thérèse has become her eternal sister and friend.
Under His Divine Gaze is a beautiful chronicle of faith and growth where Monique shares the soul-felt journey of her experiences with the saints in moments of disappointment and grace.
Followers of all religious traditions will be blessed by this testament to God’s love and His mercy.
