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Winner
Heal Childhood Trauma: The Self-Nurturing Therapy Approach to Better Adult Relationships
Dr. Julie Gowthorpe
Childhood trauma can reappear as relationship struggles. Dr. Julie Gowthorpe’s Heal Childhood Trauma shares her Self-Nurturing Therapy framework, combining Cognitive-Based Mindfulness and Attachment to repair self-esteem. As a leading psychotherapist and coach, Julie Gowthorpe, PhD, bridges the gap between the wounded child and the struggling adult to repair damaged self-esteem and forge healthier, happier relationships. Research-backed and clinically proven, Gowthorpe’s methods stem from her Self-Nurturing Therapy techniques and her own practice, helping you move beyond the events of your childhood to a happier, healthier life with strong and fulfilling relationships. Heal Childhood Trauma is the next step on your journey moving from emotionally surviving to optimally thriving.
Winner
The Connector's Compass: Navigate Your Way to Meaningful Relationships
Joe Koufman
"The Connector's Compass" helps people build relationships that actually matter, both at work and in life. Most professionals dread networking: the awkward small talk, the business card exchanges, the transactional feeling. Joe Koufman argues that networking isn't the secret to success, rather connection is. Drawing on more than 1,300 introductions through his firm, Setup, and three marriages that began with his introductions, Joe shows how anyone, even introverts, can become a skilled connector through curiosity, vulnerability, and authenticity. Readers learn to ask questions that spark meaningful conversations, build trust, make introductions that create lasting value, and maintain relationships that compound over decades.
They come away with more confidence and a clearer path to building friendships, professional ties, and a support system that lasts. The book also encourages readers to make introductions for others, so the benefit extends beyond themselves.
Winner
Why You Felt Crazy: What Gaslighting Does to You, Why Leaving Is Hard, and How to Find Your Way Out — From Someone Who Is Still Trying
Quinn Morgan
Why You Felt Crazy helps readers do one specific thing: recognize emotional abuse while it's happening, not years later. Most people in psychologically abusive relationships don't know they're in one. They think they're too sensitive, too forgetful, too difficult. This book names the patterns (gaslighting, coercive control, trauma bonding) in plain language, from inside the experience rather than from clinical distance. One reviewer wrote: "I didn't even realize I was doing it until Quinn named it." Another said a friend who shared the book "might have saved me some years of confusion." That is the measurable benefit: shortening the distance between confusion and clarity, which can mean leaving a harmful relationship years sooner, protecting mental health, finances, and safety. The book also serves readers after they leave, when healing feels slower than expected. You cannot escape what you cannot name. This book names it.