“Love is the Answer, God is the Cure” is the story of Aimee Cabo, who was in the Miami news for almost five years from 1989 to 1994 in a case the media named “The Case from Hell.” This sexual abuse case pitted her and her sister against her parents who denied all culpability. As she fought court battles, poverty, abuse, and addiction, Aimee always turned to love and to God. Another near tragedy … tragedy struck when her daughter was almost murdered by a tenant she found in Craig’s list. This is the story of a woman who had all the odds against her and how she persevered to find true love and form a family that could withstand anything.
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This is just my type of book. It is well written with nice storyline and plot. I liked the characters and how they develop through the story.
It is captivating and I just had to read it in one setting. It flows well of the pages and is an enjoyable read. It tells the story about a young girl that becomes a woman who is to marry. The story is about all the years between her age of seven until she is getting married in year 2000. Life has not been easy to her. Abuse from her nearest and that in physical, psychological and sexual way. A mix of pain, hurt, emotional ups and downs that have made her the woman she is today. It is a story that brings the reader through a lot of emotions too and when you hear it is the authors own story it only makes it worse to think about what she has been through. But luckily fate made her strong and a believer in the future.
Absolutely a captivating short story with lots of emotional moments. Enjoyable and recommendable.
Florida author Aimee Cabo Nikolov is a Cuban American who has lived most of her life in Miami. She is a trained nurse and the president and owner of IMIC, Inc, a medical research company. This memoir is her first book.
Granted Aimee Cabo Nikolov is bright, well educated, and has extensive experience in fields medical so reading this memoir at first feels like settling back for a well written novel. But then those same traits that enhance her skillful writing talent gradually reveal her incredible abuse by her parents, the nightmares of sexual abuse, drug addiction, poverty all played out in a memoir that shares every moment yet is always accompanied by Aimee’s intensive spiritualism.
An example of her narrative skills is present in the relatively benign opening – ‘It was the last night before we were to go home from our week-long sister honeymoon. Nicole, the manager, and I went to a club to celebrate our departure. The hotel manager invited his friend, Dr. Vaises, who brought along another doctor friend, Dr. Boris. Dr. Boris turned out to be from Bulgaria and had wanted to leave his country during the post-communism struggle. Jobs there paid very little and there was much confusion on how to operate in a capitalist system. So he had found a job in the DR as the resort doctor while he was making up his mind about what his next steps would be, and I thought I heard he also rotated to other hotels in Punta Cana. It sounded like a nice job if you could land it, although I would learn it was low-paying work. Dr. Boris was making jokes with Dr. Vaises and casting curious and gentle looks at me. I was doing the same to him. He was tall and slender, and he had an unusually handsome boyish face, with dark laughing eyes. He was wearing glasses that gave him an intelligent look. But what struck me most was how polite he was with everyone. He was funny and interested in what other people were saying. He came over to where I was sitting and asked Nicole and me about ourselves. “We live in Miami,” I said, smiling. This man simply made me light up. I told him I was in school pursuing medicine and that my mother was a doctor. So was my step-father but I left that out for the time being. He was intrigued by this medical family. “So you know what we go through?” he said, teasing. “I do,” I laughed. “Especially the fake illnesses.” “Older lonely rich women get a lot of those down here.”
The horror of the content is well distilled in the synopsis: ‘ “Love is the Answer, God is the Cure” is the story of Aimee Cabo, who was in the Miami news for almost five years from 1989 to 1994 in a case the media named “The Case from Hell.” This sexual abuse case pitted her and her sister against her parents who denied all culpability. As she fought court battles, poverty, abuse, and addiction, Aimee always turned to love and to God. Another near tragedy struck when her daughter was almost murdered by a tenant she found in Craig’s list. This is the story of a woman who had all the odds against her and how she persevered to find true love and form a family that could withstand anything.’
This is a fine testimony of one woman’s ability to overcome impossible odds – and Aimee shares that her salvation was her profound spirituality.
We each experience things that change our lives forever, but very few of us experience what Aimie Cabo Nikolov had to endure. At a young age, she and her sister suffered unimaginatively at the hands of their own parents, which set Aimie down a difficult path, particularly after enduring a harrowing court battle, fighting against the people who were supposed to protect her. When she found herself herself unable to protect her own child, she managed to find strength to go through custody battles and bet substance abuse. When she found faith in God, she also found faith in herself, and I found that extremely up-lifting and inspirational.
Love is the Answer, God is the Cure is an unflinchingly honest story of a woman who left a toxic family behind, to find love and joy in a family of her own. It shows how even those that have been damaged in the past, can fall in love and make a truly beautiful life. I think this book will touch and help a lot of people.
Aimee Nikolov wrote a great inspirational memoir here. The spirituality here quite literally saved Aimee’s life, this is a story about persevering despite extreme forces acting against her. Love carried her forward, and faith fueled her.
This story takes us through sexual and emotional abuse, so fair warning for people sensitive to the topic, and Nikolov doesn’t spare us the details. When her own mother doesn’t side with her, it’s a wonder she didn’t just give up. The story continues on, and more trials await her, yet she soldiers on even with the odds stacked against her. This is truly an inspirational story
Anyone going through a similar struggle, or anyone who feels like their cries are falling on deaf ears and are feeling hopeless, needs to read this story. Though the story has a lot to do with faith, there’s much much more here than the surface suggests. It’s a great read and reminds us that if we push through the mess and keep who are intact that things can turn out okay. This book is one that creates hope, and that’s a wonderful thing to see in those who struggle as Aimee did.
Essentially this is an autobiography of a woman who I would definitely describe as a survivor. Although the title includes God, there is actually minimal religious content. Each chapter starts with a prayer, psalm or bible quote and in the final chapter Aimee describes how she began to pray and use rosary beads daily and that’s about it really. The main focus of her story is how everything changed (for the better) when she met the love of her life. The author has had an incredibly difficult life and had to endure a succession of awful events and situations. She describes her life from an early age, suffering physical and sexual abuse, followed by everything imaginable, including rape, high profile court cases, public vilification, hospitalisation, post-traumatic stress disorder, drug addiction, attempted suicide and custody battles. If you want to read about love conquering adversity this book is for you!
This is a book packed with such genuine emotion and tragedy, put also layered with strength and, most importantly, hope. The strength and bravery exhibited by the author to put behind her everything she has gone through, but also to put it down in a book to help others is so uplifting and inspirational.
I recommend this book to anyone who has suffered in any way, and if you are one of the lucky ones without darkness in your past then I recommend you read it too, as you will undoubtedly have loved ones who suffered and this helps gain perspective on that.
Reading the title of this memoir, one might think it bears a heavier reliance on religious practices, and chronicles adherence for success in life. The title, however, is more a response to the overwhelming challenge recounted in this author’s experience, and ultimately an answer. Ms. Nikolov describes in excruciating, (occasionally unnecessarily so) detail the experiences of living in a home fraught with the horrors of physical abuse and extreme sexual violence levied by both parents, apparently in cahoots. The story continues, displaying the permanent destruction brought about in the author’s life by this dark start to her life, through drug and alcohol addiction, prostitution, and depression. It struggles in part with too many details about family issues which the reader gets at the beginning, as well as a slow resolution to the story. However, the author presents a unique twist just as it seems the story is ending, involving new horror, but this time involving another family member demonstrating the generational affects of abuse and assault on one’s children. It culminates with a positive outlook and hope for the future. Ms. Nikolov displays a strong character, for adult readers, but not recommended for younger readers.
Aimee Cabo Nikolov’s Love is the Answer God is the Cure is not what I was expecting. It’s a heart-wrenching real life account of one woman’s struggles against the odds stacked against her throughout her life and the salvation of finding true love.
Nikolov has gone through so much, all chronicled here. As a reader I was stunned by each additional hurdle she was faced with. In a horror novel a character may be relentlessly pursued by the stuff of nightmares but Nikolov had this for real. I couldn’t help but feel for her, although her writing never comes across as attention-seeking or like she’s competing to be seen as worse off than anyone else.
Despite its contents this is not a depressing read, but a story of courage and of a journey and it shows that love can ultimately triumph.