I loved this book precisely for what it did not do - provide detailed instructions for what to do. As someone who - like the author - both has something of a calculus and something of my own emotional reactions, I loved how carefully she looked at the question of emotions and love and the desire to be JUSTIFIED in the choices we make. She’s so good at peeling back the core of the conversation and asking what role love and dislike and pretense and the need to be right play in this conversation. 
Her read also points out all the ways that love and its poisoned alter ego hate are such an integral part of the conversation. And how often the breakdown comes between those who love still and those who no longer can. 
And how those of us who never loved that particular thing find the prospect of engaging with it incomprehensible. 
The fact that it was also a memoir about how we think about monstrosity and who we are when we are the judged and not the judge was just…exactly right. 
Also, Dederer writes parentheticals the way I do (before I edit them out out of fear that maybe I used too many) and I will forever love her for they.