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Rating: 
Summary: useful, readable - and misses essential points
Review: I have specialized in providing professional education and therapy to divorced, courting, and re/wedded couples since 1981. I am (a) 66, (b) a stepgrandson, stepson, and ex-stepfather and stepbrother, (c) an invited Board member of the Stepfamily Association of America, (d) a contributing editor to 'Your Stepfamily Online,' and (e) the author of six personal-growth and family-relations books.
I recommend this book to readers who want (a) a light-hearted, readable introduction to stepfamily life, and (b) more awareness on how birth-order affects family relations. I do not recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the core reasons most US stepfamilies are significantly stressful, and why millions redivorce or endure daily agony. The lack of an index reduces the utility of this book as a reference.
Like most lay and clinical stepfamily authors, psychologist Leman omits explanation and advice on these essential re/marital and stepfamily stressors:
1) why and how to assess and reduce co-parents' psychological wounds from childhood (vs. divorce). Most divorced and stepfamily adults appear to be significantly wounded - and don't (want to) know it or what it means;
2) the origin and impacts of blocked grief in adults and kids, and how to spot and reduce it. The author does acknowledge the relevance of healthy grief, but doesn't alert readers to blocked grief and what do about it;
3) co-parent unawareness of, and/or indifference to, (a) normal personality formation, composition, and function; (b) keys to high-nurturance families and relationships, (c) effective communication skills, (d) healthy 3-level grief, and (e) stepfamily realities, norms, implications, and hazards. And Leman omits...
4) the implications of little effective re/marital and co-parenting help (i.e. courtship coaching, classes, informed counseling, co-parent support groups) available in most communities and the media.
In my clinical experience, these unseen factors often promote needy, love-dazed courting co-parents to commit to the wrong people (mate, stepkids, and "other parent/s"), for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time. Then the factors inhibit co-parents from identifying and resolving core personal, role, and relationship problems like these:
http://sfhelp.org/10/problems.htm
For suggestions on how to pick practical remarriage, co-parenting, and stepfamily books, see this:
http://sfhelp.org/11/choose_bks.htm
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