I struggled through this book. While the story was engrossing I felt that Freitas went off on tangents that just went on and on. I don't really care how many people she kissed at prom nor does it really do much for a story about a professor's inappropriate behavior. It almost seems like she is trying to build a case for why his behavior is wrong which makes me sad. Stalking is brutal in the sense that it takes away your sense of security, you find yourself jumpy and always looking over your shoulder. No matter what she wore, talked about, discussed, even if she had had sex with him, his behavior is wrong because it was unwanted. Once the relationship moves beyond consent its unwanted and creepy.

This is an interesting story and one I think others should read, her writing style just wasn't for me.

Rating: 3.5

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

TRIGGERS: sexual abuse, stalking, PTSD

“Consent” is a book about telling a woman’s truth. Donna Freitas suffered a form of sexual abuse in grad school and it destroyed her life as she knew it. She tells the reader exactly, step by step, how this person took a calculated measure to infect every inch of her world. She puts the reader into her skin and it made me feel gross just reading about the abuse. It’s exhausting to read on about how much she suffered because she makes you empathize with her so much, even if you haven’t suffered anything similar to it in your actual life. This is an important book to read to hear about consent in the viewpoint of a victim of abuse. Especially, abuse that occurred in the academic world and how universities (and the Catholic Church in this case) respond to reports of sexual abuse. It’s an upsetting story with an important message. Due to its content, this book could be triggering to those who are suffering from PTSD due to abuse in their past. I would recommend this book to those interested in reading on the topic of consent or sexual abuse scandals in university settings. There are plenty of books on this topic but this book provides the most important angle of all. The view of the person who suffers the most from the incident. It’s so important for her to be able to tell her story, so you should listen and know her story.

This review has also been published on my Goodreads profile and my personal blog.

Consent by Donna Frieitas is a must-read. In this case, the perpetrator was a professor, a teacher of the most eminent rank. With this social distinction, he taught Frieitas the meaning of fear, trauma, and how one moment of recollection leads to a recrudescence of the event and the pain that's associated with it.

At the opening of the book, when the professor continued to harry Frietas about opening the package and read his essay, I knew this was getting to be a disturbing read.

Today, countless women are being victimized. By some means, they are being forced to "consent," hence the #mettoo movement into something that goes against their moral values and eventually takes away their innocence.

This book was challenging to read and very triggering; nevertheless, I feel that it is an essential book, and Frietas narrated her story exceptionally well.

Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention by Donna Freitas is Donna’s account of the stalking and unwanted attention she faced as a graduate in college.

Donna is a well-published author, a scholar, and knowledgeable in her field, of sex, religion, and consent on college campuses. She’s a sought after speaker and thrives in academia.

Donna is a doctor, a daughter, and a friend. But she’s also a victim.

As a college graduate, one of her professors at her Catholic university–a priest–started taking an inappropriate interest in her. While his attentions weren’t blatantly sexual, they were incessant and unwanted. This priest would call Donna, follow Donna, and fill her mailboxes with letters.

Since he was in a position of power, Donna struggled with how to handle her stalker. He was everywhere. She couldn’t get away from him.

Consent is an in-depth examination of Donna’s nightmarish years as a doctoral candidate being stalked by her professor.

Consent by Donna Freitas was a fascinating read. While it didn’t blow me away, I enjoyed it.

It’s so easy to think of harassment as black and white. Is sending a few letters and making a few phone calls really harassment? Donna does a wonderful job exploring consent and what that really means. Donna didn’t consent to her professor’s attentions. She was an unwilling participant who was subjected to her professor’s repeated and unwanted affection. And her professor was positively relentless in his quest to commandeer Donna’s time.

Unwanted attention is not consent, and this is not okay. Stalking is very real and can be just as damaging as other forms of harassment.

While Donna’s life and hardships were interesting, a lot of the book was redundant. Consent could have been a lot shorter and more enjoyable without the needless repetition.

If you enjoy memoirs, you might enjoy Consent by Donna Freitas!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing the Kindle version of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Consent is a beautifully written memoir by a woman that was stalked by a professor who was also a priest during graduate school. This professor was her mentor and an integral part of her getting a PHd. Her dream was to also become a professor and this professor took this dream from her.

This book made me feel so angry that this man continued to make her life so miserable for so long while she continued to wonder what “she had done”. She was young and had done nothing except be enthusiastic to learn. He also took full advantage of her mental state as she went through personal issues with her family and even ingratiated himself into her family life.

This memoir is so pertinent today with many women living through the same situations. I would like to thank Netgalley for providing me an ARC for my honest review.

Consent is a timely and important memoir. Frietas holds nothing back, and the result is a raw and unflinching read that may be quite difficult for some to get through without screaming at the top of their lungs about the injustices she and so many like her have endured. While I can't recommend this book to everyone due to its heavy subject matter, I do recommend it without any hesitation to anyone seeking to understand power dynamics, sexual harrassment, and the issues surrounding present #MeToo movement.

Thank you to Donna Freitas, Little, Brown and Company, and Netgalley for allowing me to access a digital copy of this book in advance of its release. As always, all opinions are my own.

This was really a difficult book for me to get through not because of the writing, but because of the subject matter and my own personal feelings in response to the book. It was just a hard one to keep picking up and putting down. I thought this was beautifully written and incredibly honest, but sometimes a bit uneven in terms of pacing. A very timely and powerful novel!

Thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown &Company for a digital galley in exchange for an honest review.

This is the type of non fiction that can be really difficult to rate. The author, Donna Freitas is detailing the lengthy pursuit of a stalker during her grad school time at Georgetown University. This happened in the 90's and as Donna takes us through the increasingly difficult situation that she lived in, it becomes increasingly clear how far her pursuer will go. It's Donna's story and she's walking in her truth and I know that it couldn't have been easy to have it published for a bunch of strangers to read. I applaud her for this.

Truthfully, that's why it's difficult for me to rubber stamp it with a 3 star. But given the difficult topic, it's not one that I would easily recommend to just anyone.


Goodreads review published 19/07/19
Publication Date 13/08/19

This book was hard to read. It is raw, honest, and felt like a deep dive into someone else’s head. Freitas’ experience called to mind experiences of my own, but while I empathized with her plight, I didn’t identify with her. That is to say, I seemed to be a slightly unwelcome intruder in her experience and recollection, which was a unique situation.

Quality of Writing: 6/10
Pace: 5/10
Plot Development: N/A
Characters: N/A
Enjoyability: 5/10
Insightfulness: 8/10
Ease of Reading: 8/10
Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I thought about giving this book four stars. It is quite good. I just couldn't let go of the fact that it dragged after a while, and while I understand this is a memoir, there is only so much introspection I can take. After a while I would start to wish she'd move on to another topic besides her mental state.
Now, I don't want to sound callous. I understand severe anxiety, and trauma. Those are serious. I understand stalking is serious, and it has major lasting effects on a person. But her writing style focused too much on her repetitive thinking, and not enough on moving the story forward. She wrote about her same guilt and shame-ridden thoughts and how that affected her, but I was more interested in hearing what happened next.
Dr. Freitas is a powerful writer, and a powerful feminist. I admire her for that. Sometimes though, I felt her views were a little too forceful. For all the time she spent talking about her experience, she made sure to offset it with how others gave her positive things to remember or attribute with this or that institution. But I didn't feel like it was enough. She talked so forcefully against the Catholic Church, I didn't understand why she would want to be catholic. She spoke out so much against Human Resources people and university policies, that I could fathom why she stayed or why she still teaches on campuses. For all the words she shared, I still don't understand.
Maybe that's because I didn't live it though, and I just cannot understand.
Regardless, I still think the flow of the book was good. The stories were crisp, and the experience was troubling. A fairly good read overall.

This is a story based on the authors experience with sexual harassment by one of her professors. And not just any professor, but a priest,who by no means could not accept the author's nos.
The author provides the hurdles and obstacles she had to go through, at first to try and deal with this on her own for 1year before speaking up. Not her family or friends knew anything that was going on. Second, not having that support system from the University she attend school at. Only ONE priest heard her,believed her and attempted to help her in anyway he could.
I only wished the story would have wrapped up in a different manner. What became of the administration at the University? What became of her father once he knew about this book?

Thank you Net galley and publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

Consent is a brilliantly rendered memoir authored by a woman, Donna Freitas, who dreamed of being a professor. Unfortunately, she encountered a huge hurdle to realizing her dreams when a professor, a priest no less, became obsessed with her.

Let’s just say that the most compelling part of this book is the complete candor with which it is written, but that is closely followed by the beautiful use of language. Parts of the story are poetically rendered; others have more of an academic cast, and some parts are simply deeply personal.
What makes this book so fascinating is that Donna tells her story in such vivid detail, including her innermost thoughts and her tremendous self doubt. It does help the reader to understand how a situation can start innocuously enough, but then by the time the victim realizes what is happening, she no longer feels empowered to stop it.

Her view of herself in hindsight is so interesting. She never really is able to reconcile her image of herself as an attractive person, in control of her sexuality, filled with passion for a life of the mind with a person who was victimized, but when I read about her family background and her propensity for leaning so hard into her studies, building very close relationships with her teachers from a young age, I do see some red flags. Unfortunately, she managed to come into contact with a predator who, with little more than psychological manipulation, invaded her life. She shows how it happened through her unique lens, and the reader experiences the horror of it. She asks why me, and then I personally think some readers will see the answer – yet she remains unsure. Sadly, the ending is not as satisfying as one hopes for throughout, but it is instructive.
There was a lot I would have liked to discuss about this book, so I think it would be extremely good for book clubs. I walked away with more questions than before I read her account.

All in all, I found the author to be extremely brave to tackle this topic the way that she did, for the world to read. Five stars all the way.

I really enjoyed this book. Those interested in biographies/Memoirs will be interested in reading this book. I rate this book 5 out of 5. Generously provided by NetGalley.

Truly one of the best better books on sexual assault and sexual harassment that I have read because it offers such a unique perspective as to what sexual harassment can look like and how manipulative the perpetrators are. I was shocked to learn how deep the author's story went and how long the situation lasted. I think this would be the perfect book for someone in a toxic relationship.

Wow, what a let down.

The subject matter absolutely engrossed me, but the writing style....really bad.

I knew I was in trouble the first few pages. They feel endless and the author just goes on and on and instead of condensing the episodes to make them more compelling, she just continues.

This made for an extremely boring book.

I know that memoirs are always challenging to write and the author is brave in writing her story, but I found it way too detailed to care.

I knew going into this it would be an emotional read, but it somehow escaped my knowledge at first that this was an actual memoir. Someone actually lived these words. That knowledge makes these words so much heavier.

This was a memoir, but this was written like fiction and then like poetry and then like an academic essay and it was easy to forget that it was a true story. Freitas paints every detail very vividly and flourishes the prose into a song, instead of just an account of what happened. This mixture was unique and made the harshness of the words softer as they cut into you.

I cringed through a lot of this book, though, seeing the bigger picture made everything look so clear and hard to miss. There were so many feelings I had for young Freitas and I thought she wrote about these hardships very eloquently, both beautifully and painfully. My one issue with the book was that it felt really repetitive sometimes. The idea that she was two people and living two lives was hammered into the reader at the end of almost every chapter in the beginning and certain phrases and situations were revisited multiple times throughout the book. This is a petty complaint, but it did cause me to start to grow a bit irritated and a little annoyed after a while, which is not the feeling I want to have provoked from a book like this.

But the messaging was never lost, the messaging stood out very stark against the colourful background. She described the feelings of fear, of confusion and pain and trauma very distinctly and put to words these difficult things that not many people could properly express. I was impressed with the picture that she painted, how one minute she was describing the situation and the next, analyzing it. It was such a mix of story vs essay, of memory vs study.

I can only imagine this was cathartic, finally being able to speak with a voice that was cut from her so young. It’s a powerful book and a very scary glimpse at a problem that is still very much dominant in our present life. It may seem like movements have put harassment into the spotlight, but that ugly attention still hasn’t done enough to make the changes that are needed, and that is why books like this are important. They are a reminder that we have voices, that we need change, and that we aren’t going to just sit back and take it anymore.

This is a must-read. It examines consent even outside of sexual situations, which fills a desperately needed gap. Freitas’ experience is terrifying and revealing, and it will resonate with people of all ages. Would pair really well with “Speak” or “I Have The Right To”.

Donna Freitas perfectly personifies so much that is wrong with the male-female power dynamic in the workplace and/or academic setting. Combined with the role the Catholic church had in her story, this book is poised to take off in the current cultural climate, and I can see this as an excellent choice for book clubs.

I was slightly taken aback by Freitas's vivid language in the first two chapters (the metaphor of women being silenced / having their tongues literally ripped out) - this went on for multiple gore-filled pages and seemed to me to provide little else besides shock value. Freitas's story is powerful enough on its own, and I felt like this chapter wasn't needed. It took me a while to warm up to her personality and writing style. However, about a third into the book, I was truly captivated and couldn't put it down.

I would highly recommend this to others - Freitas is a truly powerful voice for women.

Few books get my stomach all roiled up as this one did. What a terrible position to be in...when your instructor holds part of your future in his or her hands, but is at the same time your tormentor and stalker. Such an important story for our day and time, when we as women are galvanizing and gaining more and more strength to say, "You will not treat me like this. No more!" Freitas did have the courage to report the stalker, but those with the position and power to help her ended up to be manipulators, and even liars. No wonder so many of us are afraid to report abusive treatment. I regret that this happened to Ms. Freitas, but greatly appreciate her courage in writing about the experience and continuing to speak on it publicly. Such an important topic.

A difficult but important read. The book's title refers to the ways that current popular feminist discourse on consent fails to prevent or abate harm. Freitas is right - no one can consent to being gaslit. There is not a time when women are asked if they would like to be stalked, harassed or traumatized so they can say no.