SMART Love

The Manual

By: Vincent Fudge II

Narrated by: Dominic Olcan

Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Establish healthy communication in your relationship with this insightful guide, which includes activities, examples, and experience.

Where do you turn when all your ideas for improving your marriage fail? If you’re seeking new ways to communicate with your partner and strengthen the bonds that brought you together, SMART Love's methodology offers a welcome and effective alternative.

A relationship guide with concrete examples, SMART Love lays out an interactive and empowering method to foster communication and ultimately help save your marriage from divorce. Drawing on a year-long case study of a troubled relationship, Vincent Fudge II discusses the importance of concepts, such as emphasizing communication techniques, measuring progress, and practicing relational accountability and alignment of goals.

Learning how to be a better partner takes commitment and understanding. With this book, you will have the tools needed to improve your chances of success and lifelong love.

"SMART Love, a quasi-fictional educational narrative, that focuses on relational improvement by establishing healthy behaviors in a relationship emphasizing effective communication techniques, measuring progress, relational accountability, and alignment on relationship goals. With chapters existing as month-long reviews, each month/chapter is transitioned into with a flashback memory of a significant event that provides context as to how they wound up where "Edward" and his wife were at the beginning of the one-year journey. Key instances of communications successes, capitalized by positive outcomes from the SMART Love exercises, inspire Edward to continue working on making his marriage work. Conceptually, SMART Love is meant to do two things: 1. tell a story about a man’s commitment to work on fixing his relationship and describe very vividly what that experience looked like, and 2. share realistic relationship improvement concepts and describing how to approach implementing them." (Vincent Fudge II)

©2020 Lloyd Vincent Fudge Jr. (P)2020 Lloyd Vincent Fudge Jr.

SMART goal setting but for relationships!!!

Maaan this is like THE BEST book I ever listened to. So many life gems and keys to success, I literally felt like SMART Love was written for me. It's so insightful and easy to draw real life parallels by the way scenarios are laid out. The structure is setup in really good segments to, like chopped up into good size chunks to make it easy to come back to and pick up where you left off. It's easy to get lost in the listen, but not really meant to get through in one sitting. It's like you hafta really marinate on some of the things discussed, and then come back. The narrator has a smooth and educated voice, and made it really easy to connect with the story. There's some big words I've never heard before and had to look up, but I feel like I got smarter from it. What a journey though!!! he really put it all on the line for his marriage and what they went through. I highly recommend this book.

Good story, great listen

I've listened to this narrator before, and it was interesting to hear him tackle this kind of read. I have mixed emotions about the story, but my interest was maintained throughout and I had a vested interest in seeing how this SMART methodology would work out given the scenario.

A Fresh, Bright Look into Marriage

Purchase this book! SMART Love is a fresh, bright look into relationships, marriage, and vulnerable communication. The fluent transition between the compelling narrative of Edward, his wife, and his therapist and the detailed, actionable steps in cultivating better communication makes for an effective and enjoyable read. 

At 206 pages, the initial reading was quick but effective. I found myself getting into flow during the narrative sequences and taking annotations in the sections centered on communication techniques, measuring progress, relational accountability, and alignment on relationship goals. I ear-marked several activities and tried them out with my own husband. As newly weds, the activities were helpful in fostering open, vulnerable communication and establishing common relationship goals. This isn't a book for failing marriages, it's a book on creating strong, healthy relationships. 

Fudge has a strong command of tone and story-telling. The writing style is authentic in a way that doesn't feel pedantic or preachy (a common problem in many "relationship self-help" books). The narratives pieces are compelling and realistic; and each serve as a helpful supporting piece to the communication activities and concepts. Vincent Fudge II breaks out into the academic space as a powerful, black author with significant insight into relationships. 

Part of me wants to say that my favorite part was the vocal performance of Dominic Olcan, he did an incredible performance! His character interpretation of Edward felt authentic, well-paced, and easy to connect with. The sections on concepts, application, and activities had great energy and never felt boring or unimportant. Oclan established a perfect balance of professionalism and compelling vocal performance. 

This is a terrific book both in story and performance. I recommend purchasing this book! 

SMART Read

I am looking to grow my best version of me. This book lends itself to helping me to achieve this perpetual goal. The stories were relatable and insightful as well. I enjoyed this book very much and recomend reading if you want to prepare for your next relationship or heal your current one .