Nicole Killian didn’t set out to write a bestseller. She didn’t write to be praised, pitied, or even perfectly understood. She wrote You Can’t Count On Me: A Memoir of Unreliability because she carried a story that needed to be told for herself and others walking similar paths in silence for years.

For the author, the title wasn’t a joke. It was a truth she had lived with, weaponized against herself, and finally reclaimed. Growing up in a world marked by addiction, family instability, religious trauma, neurodivergence, and abuse, being reliable often felt like an impossible standard.

But as she peeled back the layers of shame and survival, she began to see that what looked like unreliability to others was actually a survival strategy, one built by a girl trying to navigate a world that never made her feel safe.

Writing the memoir was never just about documenting pain. It was about making sense of a life that never followed the rules. Nicole didn’t grow up in a Hallmark household. She grew up learning how to sleep in cars, survive under the radar, and cope with trauma through humor and storytelling. When traditional narratives about healing didn’t fit, she created her own, and You Can’t Count On Me was born.

What makes the book connect so deeply is its rawness. The author doesn’t sanitize her experiences. She writes about the messy, contradictory, painful parts of growing up with equal parts honesty and wit. From being the scapegoat to navigating childhood with undiagnosed autism and ADHD, her memoir captures what it’s like to feel different, discarded, and disconnected and still find reasons to laugh and keep going.

However, perhaps the most powerful reason Nicole wrote the book was to reach someone else, someone who might be buried in shame or who still believes that their past disqualifies them from being loved, healed, or heard. She wrote for the girl who can’t stop apologizing for being too much or not enough. This book is for adults still carrying the weight of childhood wounds. For anyone who has been told they’re unreliable, unworthy, or unlovable and believed it.

In many ways, the book is a lifeline wrapped in laughter. Nicole’s voice is sharp, self-aware, and deeply compassionate. She doesn’t offer easy answers, but she does offer solidarity. She reminds readers that trauma isn’t a character flaw, that neurodivergence isn’t a failure, and that survival, on any terms, is still survival.

By writing this book, Nicole gave herself the validation she was never handed as a child. And in sharing it, she gives others the same gift. The gift of being seen, not despite their mess, but because of it. You Can’t Count On Me is more than a memoir. It’s a confession and a mirror. It’s for anyone who has ever felt broken and for everyone still piecing themselves back together.

If you’ve ever questioned your worth because of where you came from or how you’ve coped, this book is for you. Order You Can’t Count On Me: A Memoir of Unreliability by Nicole Killian and learn how one woman’s truth can spark healing, laughter, and radical self-acceptance in others.