nomonbooks 's review for:

The Coward by Jarred McGinnis

4.75

emotional informative reflective relaxing sad medium-paced

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I am so glad I read this book. It was such a lovely read. Primarily the book is about family relationships, self-esteem, self-perception and surviving various types of trauma. The writing makes you really understand Jarred, the main character, and his relationships and anger with various people in his life. The novel is well put together and has a two-track storyline (I’m reading quite a few books like this at the moment) in the present and past – and they sort of meet in the middle. It’s one of those books where you don’t ‘love’ every character but you see them, as people with their advantages and flaws. For that, it was a really great read. The kind of book that increases your ability to feel empathy and warms your heart. I feel I got an insight into daily life of the character Jarred and his experience of being a wheelchair user and consequent complications / difficulties. For me, it was the little things, like the nicks around the door frame from the chair, and things that as a non-wheelchair user you wouldn’t think of.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC! 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Violence

Also, after I read the book, I realised the main character has the same name as the author. I didn’t and don’t know to what extent it’s autobiographical – or re-imagined autobiographical but the photo on his website was taken by Sarah McGinnis (!?) which is intriguing.