Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC.

I'm so glad I read this book. It made me feel so seen and understood and it was so nice to not feel alone in this.

I cried a lot while reading through this book and it did bring up a lot of tough memories. It was a tough read, but so, so worth it.

I would recommend this book to everyone who was a "Good Kid", but especially to those that are now parents/ planning to become parents.

It's one of those books that you won't just read once, but that you'll refer back to over and over again throughout your journey.

This one hit deep. It peeled back the “good kid” mask I wore so many years and made me feel seen. The tone is gentle but firm, and the insights stuck with me long after reading.

As a "recovering good kid", this was so validating and I will be recommending to many! This book offers a compassionate and insightful analysis of the "good kid" persona and its often-hidden origins in relational shame trauma. This is for anyone who grew up feeling they had to suppress their needs and emotions to keep the peace and earn love. The clinical expertise and personal anecdotes are accessible, making that a major strength.

My only reason for not going higher than 4 stars is that the book can have a broad scope. The author covers a range of topics related to healing from relational trauma, from identifying the signs of a "good kid" in adulthood. I didn't mind as much, but it can be a daunting amount of information for some individuals.

Despite that, I definitely recommend this read. The message is ultimately of hope and self-acceptance. This book shifts the perspective from viewing your "good kid" traits as a personality flaw to understanding them as learned trauma responses.

What a validating book! Definitely recommend this one. The author writes very compassionately and is very insightful of the “good kid” persona.

Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and the publishers for this arc!

This is a life-changing book. It is full of wisdom that will help the reader gain many tools to live a more full and happy life. This is one I will return to again and again. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of the book.

Through this book, Maggie has excellently explained and blended research, her own lived experience and work from her practice to give Good Kids like me a voice. This book ripped me open emotionally, I wept from a vulnerable, deep inner child part that has longed to be seen and heard for a very long time. It inspired me to reflect on my own childhood while encouraging me to think critically about my own impact as a parent and teacher. The practical tools she shared give a gentle, not perfectionistic roadmap for healing my relationship with myself and my children. I will be buying extra copies of this book to give my friends who are also in the thick of their personal healing and parenting journeys!

Good Kids, written by trauma therapist and self-proclaimed good-girl Maggie Nick, is a book about healing the hurt we experienced in order to parent our children with the intentional care that many of us never received. This book reaches into your soul. It slips past all of the barricades and fortresses erected from a lifetime of trauma. It reaches and extracts the quietest, most unassuming splinter, and finally, after waiting to catch your eye, whispers gently, "See? This is what has been hurting you. You were never the problem."

For some of us, these will be the most loving words ever spoken to and about us. While reading this masterfully crafted guidebook, I lost count of the number of times I got choked up. As a mother who was unmothered, Good Kids is slowly opening my eyes to the fact that I actually was always lovable…and that my kids are too. Maggie Nick confronts all the ways in which we were programmed to believe something was wrong with us. She coaches us how to, not only lovingly reparent ourselves, but also how to disrupt these cycles as we parent our own children.

It would be perfectly reasonable to think a book of this nature would demonize parents from previous generations. However, this couldn't be farther from reality. Good Kids speaks to the truth that the generational trauma our parents passed to us was, at some point, also passed on to them.

This book will make you feel seen and loved in the most healing of ways. The tenderness with which Maggie Nick painstakingly illuminates, unbandages, and treats the wounds inflicted by our caregivers slowly opens the door to the idea that you are actually worthy of love and deserve to feel good.

Good Kids lays the groundwork for what we should have experienced as children and devotes the latter portion to specifically addressing our children's needs. I have been a mother for 8 years. For the first time, I have practical tools and strategies at my fingertips to help me parent with confidence and love instead of from trauma and triggers. The book also normalizes the idea that parenting perfectly is impossible but that our mistakes do not define our parenting abilities. In fact they provide the opportunity for us to model for our children what healthy repair looks like.

I think every single adult should read this book…especially if you have kids. Get ready for a parenting and reparenting revolution. Good Kids is that powerful.