Thank you to Netgalley for providing me this ARC. Thank you to the author for sharing your story. It must be very difficult to put your life out there and be vulnerable I love memoirs and appreciated this author's important story. My only critique is that it could have been edited to be less repetitive, and therefore easier to read.

This book is well written. I enjoyed it. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. I will be reading more by this author. This book makes you think about what is going on in people's heads.

This story was a tough one to read but definitely a powerful one. There are so many women affected by harassment, unwanted sexual advances or attention everyday. It made me recall the "me too" movement we saw on social media not too far back. This is a very important story to tell and I appreciate the author telling her story. It's hard for me to give a rating to someone's personal life and story. It's also hard to say you enjoy the book with such tough content. The story needs to be out there and told siberry much commend her for that but did not enjoy the writing style. Overall reading was still a positive one of three stars.

Reading this gave me the haunting feeling that too many women have gone through similar experiences of stalking from men in power. Freitas conveys her dread in a skin-crawling way that almost all women are familiar with. Oh he's just being nice. Oh, he's just being friendly. How quickly these behaviors become unwelcome and uncomfortable.

I think books like these are important for cisgendered men to read to have better empathy for the female experience.

This book is so difficult to review. On one hand, it’s an honest and troubling story of a young woman who terrorized by her professor, her mentor — a priest. It recognizes the infuriating actions of institutions like universities and the Catholic Church. On the other hand, it ate at me that the author never stood up for herself the minute lines were crossed. Never said anything to her family or peers. I guess that’s what makes the topic of consent so challenging. As I reflect, I also see her rationale given this man’s influence and power. Who am I to judge? This is a timely topic, and I highly recommend reading this book. It definitely makes you think. Thank you to Net Galley and Little, Brown and Company for this eBook in exchange for my honest review!

This is a timely and important everyday horror story. It's a skillfully written book. I appreciated that there was no physical violence on the page, because it makes this book an accessible learning tool for anyone wanting to build awareness about the risks faced by people who are not men in everyday situations. Social awareness about how commonplace stalking and violence is seems to be increasing contemporarily, and this book is a nuanced and well-articulated exploration of these issues. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy titles such as Rage Becomes Her, Good and Mad, Eloquent Rage, etc. My biggest criticism of this book is that the text is heavily gendered and focuses exclusively on cisgender women's experiences, without recognition that other people who are not men (non-binary, transfeminine, transmasculine people) are at risk of similar or more severe violence at the hands of cisgendered, privileged men.

I felt triggered by this book, but not in a bad way. I felt the author's pain in all she had been through. Some of it very scary, but I am glad that she persevered in the end. And now is a vocal advocate for those who went through the same thing. A thought-provoking read. I voluntarily read this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Very intriguing book. Well written. Enjoyed the story. Kept me interested all the way through. Thank you for allowing me to read this book.

I was excited to receive a copy of this book from the publisher. It is a very timely tale of stalking in higher education, perfect for the Me Too era. This book will be quite successful in bookstores and libraries.

This memoir is complicated for me to review. It tells a story of how the author's professor, who was also a priest, mentor and department chair, chose and stalked his prey, a young woman eager to learn. There were several insights about harassment and abuse that I gleaned from the book, and I've included those notes below. But the book was difficult to read in part because of the content but mostly because the author drags out parts of the story and spends pages discussing a minute part of the story, perhaps in an effort to make the book longer or to psychoanalyze the situation.

I do believe this story needs to be told, and I'm grateful Donna Freitas chose to tell it. Women and men should understand how harassment and stalking feel and know that they do have a voice.

Insights:
*What they wanted was my voice. Women's tongues are dangerous when they let us keep them.
*I know that I should be capable of telling myself what I tell college students who've been assaulted and harassed like I was: It's not your fault. Don't blame yourself. And yet, I am unable to convince myself of this.
*Death of a treasured spot to me - everywhere she and he went together or where he stalked her.
*Professor L knew the way to my heart. (Predators study prey.)
*His attention made me feel special.
*You begin to doubt your judgment about everything (when your harasser doesn't accept no for an answer and continues to contrive ways to connect with you or when he/she turns the blame onto you).
*Professor L carefully calculated stalking behavior from the get-go.
*I wanted to give him a benefit of the doubt (mostly because he was her mentor, a priest, respected in the school, community and world).
*I did NOT consent. No way. But I kept my non-consent to myself. I was still too afraid to express my resistance openly.
*And I felt so ashamed. I felt many kids of ashamed.
*Saying no, really saying it firmly, was out of the question for a long, long time--until his behavior grew so intolerable and so out of control and so obsessive and unyielding that I no longer cared about my future or what might happen if I offended him. Until I was so desperate and broken that I didn't want a future anymore at all.
*I colluded with my stalker's behavior, as a way of preserving my own sanity.
*My initial consent to his behavior could not be ungiven. This man would continue to see how I was in the beginning and refuse to see how I soon became once my feelings about his behavior shifted.
*A shift occurred on the night my cover story had fallen apart.
*Victims must own the power of naming what they're experiencing.
*Mandatory reporting is like being violated all over again. It takes away the victim's voice and makes him/her confront reality before he/she is ready.
*I needed my own voice.
*Trauma is funny like that. It helps a person bury something so deeply that they literally don't remember it's there--until they do. (It shows up at strange times.)
*Replace the word "but" with "and" because two seemingly opposing things can be held in tension.
*I am no longer afraid.

I must admit I'm having a hard time with this one. It's almost as if I'm reading the same paragraph every time I put the book down and pick it back up again. Donna Freitas has written a lot of valuable books, and I'm not saying this one isn't - the process of "consent" (or not) can be a long, drawn-out and traumatic process, for sure and in this particular instance, it was creepier than many, but I still felt like a lot in this book was extremely repetitious despite it all. Regardless, there are some things that need to be known in here - like nearly everything she's written, it's important that young women read this, especially if they're headed into a mentorship relationship with someone.

Consent
by Donna Freitas
Donna Freitas has lived two lives. In one life, she is a well-published author and respected scholar who has traveled around the country speaking about Title IX, consent, religion, and sex on college campuses. In the other, she is a victim, a woman who suffered and suffers still because she was stalked by her graduate professor for more than two years
As a doctoral candidate, Freitas loved asking big questions, challenging established theories and sinking her teeth into sacred texts. She felt at home in the library, and safe in the book-lined offices of scholars whom she admired. But during her first year, one particular scholar became obsessed with Freitas' academic enthusiasm. He filled her student mailbox with letters and articles. He lurked on the sidewalk outside her apartment. He called daily and left nagging voicemails. He befriended her mother and made himself comfortable in her family's home. He wouldn't go away. While his attraction was not overtly sexual, it was undeniably inappropriate, and most importantly--unwanted.
In Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention, Donna Freitas delivers a forensic examination of the years she spent stalked by her professor, and uses her nightmarish experience to examine the ways in which we stigmatize, debate, and attempt to understand consent today.
I received this advanced copy from NetGalley for my honest review.
I felt she was a survivor, not a victim in the end. She did rise and make changes. It just drained me I question how many could go thru this and share her story. Some painted her as guilty and that was sad. I wish I had more to say but the non-fiction sometimes is truly worse than any fiction.

This book is a testament to the voices of sexual harassment victims that are silenced every day!

Freitas was a bright-eyed PhD candidate at Georgetown who was inspired and passionate about her future as a professor when her life started to take a dark turn. Eager to get the most out of her studies, she frequently attended her professors' office hours to further engage with the material. Professor L., a Catholic priest whose stature at the university meant that he would play a major role in her dissertation and career, began to take an interest in her as she continued to frequent his office after class.

At first it seemed innocent enough, as though he saw her intelligence and potential, but soon enough the lines began to blur. Before she knew it, he was calling her on numbers she hadn't given him, and showing up at addresses she hadn't given him. Even though she began to feel uncomfortable, Freitas told herself that she was just overreacting.... He was a Catholic priest with a celibacy vow... Of course it couldn't be anything more than the attentions of a caring professor, right? Yet things continued to get worse: he would beg her to go away with him or to go to plays with him, he would call her incessantly and write her multiple letters a day, he would show up outside of her classrooms, write letters to her mom, and even write an article confessing his love for her.

Because Freitas' situation unfolded before the sexual abuse and scandal of the Catholic church was exposed, not only did she have to grapple with the stalking and harassment, but she had to come to terms with what this meant about the religion she had grown up with and her family revered.

Through telling her story of sexual harassment, Freitas gives voice to the many doubts that women in similar situations face. He didn't actually rape me, so it's not that bad, right? What if nobody believe me? What if because there's never been any physical component to the harassment nothing will be done about it? How do you explicitly say no to someone who holds so much power over you and your future? How do you explicitly say no to someone who is your elder, a religious figure, and your professor? Is it because of something I did or the way that I dressed? Did I somehow give him a signal that this is what I wanted? Is it my fault?

I don't know a single woman who hasn't faced these same or similar questions, and Freitas, through her own experience, sheds light on some of the answers and some of the shades of grey regarding consent that accompany them.

In the era of the #Me Too movement, Consent provides a beacon of hope that no matter how many times institutions try to silence us, we can speak up. We can tell our stories.

While not a fun read, this book is incredibly powerful. The author finds her voice to speak her truth, including the self doubt that comes from long term gaslighting. Absolutely incredible.

Read for Netgalley, I received a free digital copy of this book for my feedback.

This book was terrifying, mostly because it was a real-life memoir of a victim of stalking. I really enjoyed the way it was written (I finished it in one sitting), but felt like the end could have been stronger with more parallels drawn to current social movements (#metoo). The narrative was very gripping until the very end, when it became lackluster and repetitive.

This is a nonfiction horror story of the realest kind. A student just wants to succeed in graduate school, so she attends her professor's office hours regularly...because that's what they are for, right? However, he slowly grooms her to become a true teacher's pet, until she can't escape his obsession. His stalking takes over her life and she cannot get away from him, and the university is no help to her at all. It's a terrifying story and an excellent discussion on consent, or rather the denial of it. Incredibly important memoir to be shared.

<i>Consent</i> by Donna Freitas is a rough book to read. Detailing the account of a young woman pursuing a PhD in her early twenties as she is subjected to the unwanted attentions of a Professor in her program. It is a very personal story to the author and yet it is a story that, while some pieces are changed and some have come out worse than others, many women in the world have experienced at one point or another. Whether it is the case of a stalker, as with Donna Freitas or sexual harassment that takes darker turns. But what they all have in common, and something I believe many people have a tendency to ignore, downplay, or forget is that they all leave a lasting and deeply traumatic effect on their subjects.

Reading the account of a woman who spent a large and rather important portion of her life dealing with the unwanted affections of a stalker, especially when it has been something that you experienced yourself, is deeply troubling and difficult to read. And it unveils a rather disconcerting truth that many of us are aware of but have not consistently fought until recently. It breaks my heart to know how prevalent it has been for men to take advantage of women in this society, particularly those men in power.

<i>Consent</i> was a troubling account, dark and uncomfortable to read. It was thoroughly brave for Freitas to publish and was an especially important commentary on the disgraces of the systems that were meant to protect and help women in these situations but only ever really served to protect the abusers and their institutions. The memoir discusses the long-lasting effect that such horrifying events leave upon their victims and the difficulties with which victims consistently have in placing blame solely on those who have hurt them.

While it doesn't quite get into the intricacies and horrors of rape, for consent does not begin with sex, <i>Consent</i> does touch deeply on the intricacies of what we consent to and what we do not, when we avoid in order to be polite and what we put up with because we are fearful of the things someone with power over our lives--whether that power is over our jobs, our futures, our families, or something else entirely--can take or destroy.

Freitas' abuser destroyed much in her life, left her with a deep trauma that took years of therapy to manage and still has not been repaired. No amount of retribution could really ever make up for the losses suffered on account of the fear and damage that such an event has on one's life. So much ignorance exists around these subjects that I genuinely believe the existence of books that account these events have the very real potential to change the course of societal thought on toxic masculinity for what and why men feel entitled to ignore consent and coerce until they get what they want.

While I would definitely recommend this book, I will say that it could be traumatic for some and is one to seriously consider prior to reading as some bits may be rather triggering.

<i>I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. </i>

Full of red flags (on both sides).

Memorable (Frightening / Disturbing / Well-written) passages:

- No amount of sexual liberation, freedom, confidence, intellectual talent, joy or voracity would save me from going through what I did with my mentor. When it happened to me, no amount of sexual empowerment could have prevented me from becoming the silenced, anxiety-ridden, nearly destroyed young woman that I became further on in my graduate-school years. The girl who began to blame herself for everything that happened.
..............The more pressing questions I have now, in hindsight, are these: Why din’t feminism save me?

- Every time visited him in his office during that spring, he would ask if I was going to take another class with him. He would ask what I oped to learn next, and then he would offer to teach whatever it was that interested me. Not only this. He offered to plan his teaching around my schedule. He kept asking me to give him my list of fall classes, so he could ensure that whatever he taught would not conflict with my required courses.

- My ability to finish my PhD depended on his willingness to get behind my candidacy, get through comprehensive exams, my dissertation proposal, and the dissertation itself. There was still so much of him that lay ahead of me. He would sit on the committee that judged both sets of my exams, and he would likely have to be on my dissertation committee, if not actually be my director. To turn this man’s approval into diaspproval would be disastrous to my program. I had to make sure I didn’t do anything to jeopardize this. So I tried to appease him now and then by agreeing to see him.

- Could I get together with him for coffee?
For a play?
To grab dinner?
Could he come over and visit my apartment?
Did I want to meet anywhere, anyplace, anytime?
We should just get together, he said, regardless of the article. As my good friend, he was worried about me. He wanted to make sure I was all right. I had a lot going on. And friends made sure their friends were all right. Friends checked in with friends who were going through a difficult time. Friends do this. Friends do that. Friends, friends, friends. This became his new favorite word. As you friend, I want to....I am....we should...He would call my apartment and preface whatever he was about to invite me to do with these words.When, inevitably, I said no to his newest idea for getting together, he too to scolding me wit this very same words.


- Now he went into my file to consult my current schedule, the location of my classes, so he new where I was at all times, what hallways I’d have to walk and when I’d have to walk them. He too to waiting outside the classroom until my professor, his colleague, let us out.

- He refused my no.

- I was still adamant about things too. Mostly that we not make too big a deal out of the situation.

- How could I have cut things off between us? How could I do this to him? He’d one nothing wrong, he’d never done anything remotely close to wrong. I must have misunderstood everything, all of his intentions. What was my problem? He’d only wanted to help me. How could i do such a thing to a friend lie him? I had to change my mind, I absolutely had to change my mind and restore things to how they were before. Worse still, he wrote, how could I do such a thing to my mother? How could I as him to cut off contact with her, of all people? Didn’t I now how much she needed him right now? Didn’t I realize how important priests were in her life, to her cancer survival, how important that he was specifically? By cutting off their correspondence, by not allowing him to go to Rhode Island to meet her, I was going to be the cause of her suffering, her terrible, terrible suffering. I had to change my mind, not only for his sake, and for our sake, but for my mother’s sake. I had to, I must. He refused to accept the alternative.

- Because the memories, the associations with what and how I lived back then have their own timelines, their own will, because they are locked away in that vault in my brain, it has taken me years to comprehend what I went through for what it was, and the myriad ways it still affects me, sneaking up on me in places and moments and situations when I least expect it. My memories of him behave much like he did.

- I’ve lived two lives, simultaneously, and have two different memories of those lives, accordingly.

- Around once a year I google him.

- I was paid a small fee for my silence and my denial. I remember my lawyer explaining to me what it was. “They are giving you a nuisance fee,” he said.

- “There is no cure for cancer,” the surgeon said. “Your mother will always have cancer. And even if we get it all out now, it will come back.”