Shame that belongs to somebody else is the subject, and the phrase this book uses for it is carried sexual shame. Kenneth M. Adams writes for adult children of sex addicts, a group the copy says has never had its story told in the recovery literature in any significant way. The audiobook runs four hours and thirty-two minutes, Ann Sprinkle reads it, and Highbridge put it out in February 2023. Four responses out of five thank more than one author.
Three Names Thanked, Only One on the Byline
Ken, Culle and Mary are the three names thanked in a March 2023 response, and exactly one of them appears anywhere on this listing. Christian Love Hutcheson gives five stars, calls the book powerful, credits it with bringing to light aspects that adult children of sex addicts have to confront, and thanks the people who found the courage to step forward. The byline reads Kenneth M. Adams PhD, on its own. Whoever Culle and Mary are, the catalog has no record of them.
Authors in the plural turns up across three separate responses, which makes the omission systematic rather than a single slip. The consequence for a listener is concrete. A recovery book assembled from several people's experience keeps changing who the first person is, and audio strips out every typographic cue that would mark the switch. A page can set a name above a testimony. A recording has to manage it with a pause, and somebody who does not know the book holds several voices will hear one.
Sprinkle Reads the List, Slower Than Scanning
December 2023 gives the plainest statement of why this book exists at all. Mom Of Many describes how affirming it is to finally read the stories of other people who grew up with a sexually addicted parent, and how empowering to learn that adult children of sex addicts develop a predictable set of characteristics because of what happened to them rather than because of who they are. That distinction, trauma response instead of personal defect, is the therapeutic move the whole book turns on.
Naming is the mechanism, and the reason this material works aloud. The copy lists what these adults carry: witnessing affairs, walking in on a parent, receiving extreme or shaming messages about sexuality and gender, hearing remarks made about their own bodies, being neglected while an addiction ran the household. Hearing that list read out in sequence is a different experience from scanning it. Recognition arrives at the pace of somebody else's voice, which is slower and much harder to skip.
Brevity looks deliberate here, and four and a half hours is short for a recovery title. The copy sets out the shape plainly: characteristics, roles, and the recovery that points toward the freedom and joy it says these adults are owed. Personal testimony fills the space between those sections. Nothing in the structure asks you to stop and complete exercises, which makes this a rare title in the category you can take in a single sitting without losing anything.
A Bill of Rights That Goes Past Once
February 22, 2023 brought the most detailed response, filed just over two weeks after release, and it points straight at something audio handles badly. That five-star entry singles out the Bill of Rights at the end of the book as the most helpful thing in it, which is a page you would want to reread, photograph and pin somewhere visible. Delivered as the closing minutes of a recording, it goes past once. The same entry reports buying copies for several therapist friends, which is print behavior.
Vocabulary is the second thing to prepare for. ACSA, the acronym for adult children of sex addicts, runs through the entire book, and the copy leans on carried shame, intergenerational trauma and divided loyalties alongside it. None of that is difficult, and all of it arrives faster by ear than it does the first time you meet it in print. A listener with no background in recovery language should expect the opening section to move quicker than it would read.
Two responses share the same generic display name, five months apart, which makes the page harder to read than it should be. Combined with a byline missing at least two of its authors, the result is a listing where you cannot easily tell how many separate people are speaking, either in the reviews or in the book itself. On most listings that would be trivia. On a title about divided loyalties and unclear family roles, it is almost funny.
A Companion to Recovery, Not a Replacement
Adult children of a parent with a sexual addiction are the stated audience, and the page shows the book landing precisely there. Happy reader, writing in July 2025, treats it as a supplement to twelve-step work, notes that the language matches what codependency programs already use, and describes it as offering insight into the family side of the addiction. That is an exact placement: a companion to a recovery process rather than a replacement for one.
Distance is what some listeners will need and will not be given. The material is explicit about what these children saw, and the recovery framing does not arrive until well after the catalog of harm. Anybody in the first weeks of processing any of this should probably work through it with somebody rather than alone in a car. Partners of sex addicts are addressed only obliquely, and clinicians looking for treatment protocol will find testimony instead.
Therapists buying for a caseload get the most portable version of this material, and that is also the reason to own it on paper as well. The recording works for a first pass, for recognition, for the moment somebody realizes the pattern has a name attached to it. The rereading, the underlining and the Bill of Rights all want a page. At least three people appear to have written this book, whatever the byline says, and the recording carries all of them.
Questions Listeners Ask
Is this audiobook only for people whose parent had a sexual addiction?
That group is who the book addresses, and the copy is direct about it. An August 2023 five-star widens it usefully, describing what helped as the account of the roles children of sex addicts take on, and the guidance on changing that narrative toward healthy relationships. Anybody working with that population professionally gets the same benefit.
How explicit is the audiobook about what these adults witnessed?
Direct without being graphic. The copy itself lists affairs, walking in on a parent, shaming or extreme messages about sexuality and gender, remarks made about children's bodies, and neglect. The book names those experiences in order to unburden them rather than to dwell on them, though hearing the list aloud is more confronting than reading it.
Does the audiobook include the Bill of Rights and any worksheets?
The closing section is read as part of the recording, so it goes by once and in sequence. Nothing extra is packaged with the recording. For a book whose most praised feature is a page people want to keep, that is the strongest argument for owning a text copy next to the audio.
