Behind Closed Doors: A Daughter’s Story by Daniella DeChristopher is a biography/autobiography that I will not soon forget. DeChristopher shares the bitter-sweet story of her mother’s and her own life with such candor that I was teary-eyed several times as I read this book.

Josie, the author’s mother got pregnant with her at 16 years old in 1949. Her family, being Italian and Catholic, viewed this as a huge disgrace. Consequently, she was kicked out of the family home and forced to marry the father of the child, Nicki Demetrios. Nickie was a ‘bad seed’ to say the least and Josie soon divorced him. Now she had a baby, no high-school diploma, no family support and no place to live. These factors greatly influenced her and her daughter’s life. Daniella, grew up moving from house to house, sometimes seemingly abandoned by her mother. How did this affect her? Can the author find happiness after such a troubled childhood? This book will answer these questions, as well as teach or remind the reader of other valuable lessons.

I enjoyed reading this book. It is a little under 300 pages and is composed of a brief Introduction, 26 chapters, an About the Author page and an acknowledgement page. It is notable that in the About the Author page, DeChristopher takes the time to summarize some of the lessons she has learnt in her pursuit of happiness. I was not able to find any distracting grammatical errors to complain about. I was elated that the font size was comfortable enough for me to read without having to zoom in on the pages. There was only one instance where I noted that the book could have made use of a formatting technique such as a partition or a different font to separate a daydream from actual events in the story. I think that some readers might take a while to discern whether that scene I am referring to is a daydream or not.

Also, the writing style was more tell than show but the author was able to make this work out because her tone appealed to my emotions (as I mentioned before, I was teary-eyed a couple of times). The author did an amazing job making all the characters very life-like. I was able to connect with persons that appeared for only a few pages in the book.

In conclusion, I rate Behind Closed Doors 4 out of 4 stars. I recommend this to anyone who is interested in biographical/ autobiographical stories.