Guide

She's a great presenter - far better than me. But sometimes less is more, and my approach is to keep things simple and straightforward - because that's what most people want.

 

I've read all of the customer reviews. Several talk about using the techniques in the book to identify who their matches are, but not one of the customers mentions using them to knock down 'brick walls'. (One talks about an ancestor who was adopted after their parents died in a fire, but doesn't make it clear whether the parents' identities are known.)

Experienced family historians take DNA tests in order to knock down 'brick walls', because DNA is the only source of evidence left once the records have been mined. If this book doesn't help with that then it could indeed be less useful than a pair of socks (though I may be biased - I went shopping for socks yesterday and couldn't find any that were sufficiently colourful).

Some of the customer reviews talk about Y-DNA and X-DNA, neither of which are relevant for those of us who use Ancestry.

If it was me I'd rather have an extra DNA kit for Christmas - you can never have too many cousins testing, and if you pay for the test they can hardly refuse to give you access to their matches.

 

If they're not curious about their ancestry, and not keen to help, I'd suggest you look for other cousins - it's hard to engender empathy where there is none. But you're likely to have over 100 3rd cousins, so there are plenty to chose from.