A review by pocketbard
The 5 Personality Patterns: Your Guide to Understanding Yourself and Others and Developing Emotional Maturity by Steven Kessler

Did not finish book.
DNF. I tried to read this one, truly I did. It was recommended to me by an author (K.M. Weiland) whose non-fiction books on storytelling craft I deeply respect and who has been incredibly helpful in my journey as an author. So when she suggested this book as part of her year-end wrap-up, I put it on my TBR. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get past the first few chapters. It’s ostensibly a book about five personality types (hence the title), but it’s far more new-age-y and woo-woo than I like in my non-fiction books. The depictions of the types are decent enough, I suppose, but as soon as Kessler starts talking about how those types form and function, he completely lost me. (The first type supposedly forms because the new soul has trouble with embodiment as it enters the fetus, and the book doesn’t get any less “mystical-energy-themed” from there.) I got 13% of the way through – long enough to read the basics of each of the five types but not long enough to read the detailed chapters on each one. I wouldn’t recommend reading any further than that; in fact, I wouldn’t recommend reading it at all.