Boiling a Frog Slowly: A Memoir Of Love Gone Wrong

by Cathy Park Kelly

The perfect match. Or so she thinks.
Her warmth and empathy. His charisma and ambition.
Yet, Cathy feels safer teaching battle-scarred gangsters in a prison classroom than at home with her own partner.
By day she walks on eggshells. At night she sleeps on the backseat of her car. Her safe place is an all-night roadhouse; her best friend, her journal.
The slow boil intensifies until, one day, Cathy finds her grandmother’s armoire smashed to pieces in her bedroom, a hammer on the floor, her life in splinters beside it.
Part memoir, part inspiration, Boiling a Frog Slowly is unflinching in its confrontation of abuse and utterly courageous in its portrayal of redemption.

216 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2021

Reviews

[Debi Hawkins]

This book is written with a gentle honesty and brutal insight into living with fear and anxiety brought on by an unpredictable and violent partner.

Living with a narcissist is a tricky business and seemingly insignificant choices that we make can turn our lives into a horror film very quickly. I found Park Kelly's retelling of this part of her life distinctly film noir at times. I felt like I was there in that flat, in the dark garage, on the dark road to nowhere. It is pure brilliance, but it was heart-wrenching to read about her slow dance with abuse.

When I first held this book in my hands, I didn't know it was actually an undetonated bomb. Personally, I didn't anticipate how reading this would trigger memories for me and it took me a week of opening and shutting the book to get through the very short Chapter 1. Then, when I had dealt with that, I could not stop reading.

This is a difficult book to recommend...because it's not light and easy holiday reading, because it's so bloody real I found myself touching my own scalp from time to time to feel if there was any blood oozing. But I recommend it anyway, because... it's full of moments of bright light, healing love and redemption for the author and for anyone else who finds themself in that position. They too can find a way out to the light.

[Paulinchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein sehr intensives Buch! Achtung Trigger-Warnung: Das Buch handelt von einer Geschichte Häuslicher Gewalt. Es ist ein Memoir der schmerzlichen Erfahrungen der Autorin selbst.

Unfassbar Herz zerreißend. Ich musste es oft beiseite legen, weil es mir zu heftig wurde. Es ist ein realer Einblick in das traurige Schicksal von vielen FLINTA* Personen in dieser Welt.

Hätte mir eine Trigger-Warnung im vorraus gewünscht.

[Chrystal Udall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cathy Park Kelly writes with a plain honesty which made her memoir incredibly tough to read - discovering abuse in such a candid manner made me highly uncomfortable, and yet, I couldn’t put it down. It is not only the physical impact her abuser, Karl, had on her that was so difficult to read. The psychological abuse was far worse.

I found her analysis in the final chapter regarding her learnings from her experience to be particularly intriguing. It may help readers to recognise the signs and remove themselves from toxic relationships before abuse ensues. As Kelly states “it all starts with the salt”.

I’d highly recommend it to men and women alike. Although it explores a heterosexual relationship where the man is the abuser, both men and women can find themselves in abusive relationships - particularly psychologically abusive ones.

[Gail Gilbride · Rating 5 out of 5]

Abuse creeps into one’s life, like a thief in the night.

Even a match made in heaven, can take an unexpected turn. And no, you don’t always see it coming and it isn’t always physical. The exact moment of clarity is hard to define. The decision to leave is fraught with vacillating contradictions.

Does this sound at all familiar?

The heroine of Boiling a frog slowly, teaches juvenile offenders in jail. It’s challenging and frightening at times. So luckily, she has a safe haven and partner to come home to…

And she does at first. But ever so gradually, things change. Yes, love and passion are there to begin with. So how come she creeps to her car some nights and curls up on the backseat? Why does her new safe place become an all-night roadhouse? And what’s with the lies to those dearest to her?

When Cathy experiences her grandmother’s armoire being smashed to pieces in her bedroom, a vital piece of this confusing puzzle finally clicks into place.

Boiling a Frog Slowly is not only about insidious abuse. It is also about digging deep and trusting the inner strength you discover, when you thought it had disappeared forever.

Park Kelly writes deftly and with heart-breaking insightfulness. Her story struck many chords, on a number of levels. If you or anyone you know, has suffered abuse of any sort, then this memoir should be at the top of your reading pile.

[Penny Haw · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are many reasons that people remain in abusive relationships. Very few, I suspect, are straightforward. In her wrenching memoir of love, shame, and abuse, Cathy Park Kelly tells her story of eight years of loneliness and denial, during which time she doggedly hung on to the hope that love would endure a relentless barrage of battering and bruising, both physical and psychological.

‘Hope can be the voice of wisdom assuring us that change is coming, the difficulty will ease ... But hope can also be a trickster, luring us with a charismatic grin and a sexy beckoning of the handout of the truth of the present moment to a non-existent future,’ she writes.

In Boiling a Frog Slowly — A Memoir of Love Gone Wrong, Park Kelly describes how, when she falls in love with charismatic and ambitious Karl, she ignores the early warning signs. After all, no one is perfect, are they? When the arguments begin, she turns to reason. ‘Conflict is opportunity for growth,’ isn’t it? When the abuse intensifies, Park Kelly ups her reading of self-help books and looks for keys ‘to unlock mutual understanding’.

Even when she dreads going home and finding Karl there, is forced to tiptoe to her car at night for a few hours of safe sleep or must flee to 24-hour cafés to avoid raising Karl’s ire because she is ‘pulling on’ him, Park Kelly stays in the relationship.

It is a long and lonely time during which the author, who barely recognises herself, is filled with shame and keeps the truth from both her mother and her best friend. So, what changes to compel Park Kelly to leave? Just as why she stayed is complicated, so too is where she found the courage to leave. Read the book to find out more and reach your own conclusion.

The memoir tells a story of life with an abuser, the violence, manipulation and associated shame. It also describes the uncertainty and humility of the abused who, through most of it, believes she must shoulder some of the blame. It is a raw, courageous memoir, articulate, honest and vivid. Despite the distressing subject, I read it with interest and pleasure, and found it a deeply satisfying book. Not only does it give voice and offer hope to others suffering abuse, but the book (particularly the ‘What I Know Now’ section at the end) gives thorough attention to all those, ‘why didn’t she just ...’ questions you might have.

For some, Boiling a Frog Slowly is the opportunity to walk in another’s shoes. For others, it is a crucial reminder: you are not alone. It deserves great readership.

[Thato Mapule · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book you could accomplish reading in one sitting, but the insidious abuse detailed throughout this memoir might not let you. Cathy Park Kelly painstakingly lets you in on the abuse she endures (for years) at the hands of her partner. The less obvious theme of this memoir was the (psychology of) shame victims of abuse suffer and how the very devious nature of emotional abuse makes it harder for people to leave abusive relationships.

[Bonnie Espie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir touched me, deeply.

It reminds me to remember the old adage: in a word where you can be anything, be kind.