Debut author Leigh leans into her personal experience with an optimistic self-help book for “smart girls” who find themselves, at the end of a bad relationship, with “with zero self-esteem, blinking and completely at a loss”—and ready to analyze what went wrong in order not to repeat the cycle. Her approach is to make explicit some often-unexamined core beliefs that women may have about themselves, to show how those beliefs can be twisted to create a path of relationship failure. Then she proposes rewriting those beliefs to help readers remove arbitrary limits, discard codependent habits, and prioritize self-care and mental health, ultimately affirming that “I will not betray who I am.”

Acknowledging that others have their own sets of core beliefs derived from their own experiences, Leigh demonstrates the process of identifying, interrogating, and eventually rewriting a set of beliefs (“It is important to keep things steady and stable”; “I am smart, but I can't appear smarter than my partner”) that, in relationships, lead to “self-destructive results.” In crisp prose that’s both pained and touched with wit, she digs into the wrenching process of a relationship rooted in those certainties imploding—“Rather than heed your own truth, you bury it in desperate attempts to fix the quickly snowballing issues,” she writes, in one charged, relatable passage.

Leigh avoids firm details about her own trauma, putting the emphasis instead on healing after a breakup, ending unhealthy cycles, and above all “choosing yourself.” Rather than promise easy fixes, Leigh smarty presents this as an ongoing process, urging readers toward “finding your self-confidence, and learning to trust your own voice” as steps on the path to seizing control of one’s own expectations and convictions. Despite the “smart girl” branding, Leigh’s guide toward learning to love again—first one’s self, the others—eschews buzzwords, cute formulations, and big promises. Instead, it offers warm, empathetic straight talk and clear, actionable advice.

Takeaway: Kind guidance for women rebuilding self-esteem after a bad relationship.

Comparable Titles: Nancy Colier’s The Emotionally Exhausted Woman, Jaime Mahler’s Toxic Relationship Recovery.

Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A-/strong>