(Won through a Goodreads giveaway! Thank you to author Michael Sorensen for providing me a free e-copy.)

The introduction was a little off-putting; it’s very clear that, as Sorensen himself states, he doesn’t have much experience as a writer: overly descriptive language, cliches, excessive italics, and multiple grammatical errors (whose/whose, their/there/they’re). Most relevantly, the suggested lines and dialogue samples don’t quite read as natural, which doesn’t help his point about using them to replace the standard platitudes (“It could be worse,” etc).

But he’s clearly done some research — and admits upfront that the book is primarily based on personal experience rather than scientific backing, which doesn’t completely invalidate his advice but does make it less credible, especially since the majority of his example conversations are completely theoretical.

Not that I’m an expert either, but I had some fundamental disagreements with some of his suggestions. Explaining that you relate to the other person’s experience is all well and good, but not enough emphasis was given to how easy it is to make it about yourself (and I thought his examples did fall on that side, even if he does “redirect” to his conversational partner at the end). And as I understand “I statements,” the point isn’t to preface exactly what you were going to say otherwise — “I feel that you never take out the trash,” for example, will probably still put the addressee on the defensive — but rather to reframe the situation: “I feel like my time isn’t valued because I end up having to do most of the chores. If you could take out the trash earlier, it would help.”

Thankfully this book was a short one, the kind you can get through in a single sitting. Which is intentional, so you can “immediately start applying” his Four-Step Method in real life — a little presumptuous, but I guess it’s a fair assumption that you picked up this book because you wanted to read what he had to say.