Clearly I am really having a tough time internet wise because I have NOT been able to write anything! I can barely use my personal laptop to do anything, not even my homework for Chemistry, so I don’t know how that’s going to be tomorrow. We will see how it goes tomorrow. Maybe I just have to restart my laptop? I don’t think I’ve done that in a while.

It’s stressing me out though!

Either way, thank you so much to Rachel’s Random Resources for having me on this tour and for hosting! Be sure to click on the banner to see the rest of the schedule, more information on other tours, and to support my fellow hosts!

Deceit has a certain allure when your life doesn’t match up to the ideal of what it means to be a modern man.

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.

This book tackles hard issues such as male depression, dysfunctional families and degenerative diseases in an honest, life-affirming and often humorous way. It focuses particularly on the challenges of being male in today’s world and explores how our silence on these big issues can help push men to the brink.

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I’m very excited that my debut novel ‘Surviving Me’ is due to be published on the 14 November. The novel is about male minds and what pushes a regular man to the edge. The novel combines all the themes I can write about with authenticity.

I qualified as a clinical psychologist in 1992 and initially worked with people with learning disabilities before moving into the field of neurology in 1996. I worked in the NHS until 2008 when i left to write and explore new projects.

I now work as an independent clinical psychologist in West Sussex.

Jo speaks and writes for several national neurology charities including Headway and the MS Trust. Client and family related publications include, “Talking to your kids about MS”, “My mum makes the best cakes” and “Shrinking the Smirch”. 

In the last few years Jo has been offering psychological intervention using the acceptance and commitment therapeutic model (ACT) which is the most up to date version of CBT. She is now using THE ACT model in a range of organisations such as the police to help employees protect their minds in order to avoid symptoms of stress and work related burnout.

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Rachel’s Random Resources, and Unbound Digital for this free copy. All quotes in this review are taken from the Advanced Reader Copy and may change in final publication.

I think one of the coolest things about this one was that this had the point of view of two men rather than all of the women lead books that I’ve been reading lately. And seriously, I’m all for women lead books. I love female protagonists a lot more than male protagonists anyway, that’s what I seem to gravitate towards anyway, but I thought it was cool that I got to switch it up a little bit this time around.

I was about to say “I think” again oops.

It was really heartbreaking to hear the male side of depression, as I feel like sometimes people forget that anyone could suffer from depression, not just women. It get to the point where one of our MCs Tom has some suicidal thoughts, and his reasons for wanting to end his life made sense from his point of view. I don’t know how I would have been able to handle what he went through, especially not being male myself. I understand that there is a difference in feeling less like a man for legitimate reasons, and to be subject to toxic masculinity, and there was a part of me that felt like there was a line that was blurred between those two points. Whether or not Tom and Adam realized they were crossing it, I don’t know if they knew.