Wow. Just wow. This book was amazing. Simply amazing.
Goodreads Blurb
Surviving Me by Jo Johnson
Tom has decided he doesn’t want to live. Adam wishes he had a choice.
Tom’s lost his job and now he’s been labelled ‘spermless’. He doesn’t exactly feel like a modern man, although his double life helps. Yet when his secret identity threatens to unravel, he starts to lose the plot and comes perilously close to the edge.
All the while Adam has his own duplicity, albeit for very different reasons, reasons which will blow the family’s future out of the water.
If they can’t be honest with themselves, and everyone else, then things are going to get a whole lot more complicated.
Review
I get so excited to review a great book so I can share it with the world but, with that excitement, comes a lot of stress. See, I know I will never be able to give Surviving Me the justice it deserves. I’ll try anyway.
There are many different themes at play in this book: low self-esteem, depression, long-term illnesses. These topics can be hard to handle, especially if you can see elements of your own life in the characters. However, these topics bring something important to the world: discussion on the pressures men face.
It was different for me to have a male narrator and, at first, I didn’t really like Tom. In the first few chapters he came across as a stuck-up salesman who concentrates too much on other people’s appearance. Then the author peels back the layers and we see a man who is struggling, and struggling alone as he tries to keep up the masculine, hard-man, provider persona the world expects of him. It pains me the number of men who fall as low as Tom, and worse, because of these expectations.
Still, Surviving Me is not all doom and gloom. There really is light at the end of the tunnel. I’m not going to tell you about Tom’s light, but his journey does produce two solid pieces of advice: everything happens for a reason and you are not your job.
I couldn’t put Surviving Me down. It gave me all the feels. I really hope there is a sequel and that Jo Johnson continues to write books that bring such an important topic to the forefront.
Purchase your copy of Surviving Me here*.
I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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