The Tour Inbetween: Book revew of Nancy Tucker's The Time in Between

This is an important book. Such an important book.

I cannot stress to you enough how important this book is.

Now I know there are other memoirs out there about mental health and eating disorders (read Nancy's guest post on Georgia's blog The Bibliomanic which features her own recommendations) but I myself have not read any.

Non-fiction and, I must admit, non-fiction surrounding issues such as mental health haven't been on my radar as far as reading material goes. I stick to fiction and mainly children's fiction/YA as I work in a school library so as you can imagine I don't come across books that take a hard hitting stance on issues such as eating disorders.

However I made a pledge at the beginning of this year to read more non-fiction (I am failing miserably) so when I saw Stevie asking if anyone would like her to send them a copy of Nancy's book The Time in Between I said yes.

Boy am I glad I did.


Now, TTIB (as I shall call it from now on) is not an easy book to read. You cannot float through it as you may with another book. No. TTIB grips you firmly from the very first page and does not let go until the very last. Nancy's story is at once horrifying and impossible to turn away from. She has not shied away from any of the issues that face a young girl suffering from a severe eating disorder. She has opened herself up and poured her story into a book that illuminates just how destructive anorexia can be.

It so happens that I started reading TTIB at the beginning of a new fitness and healthy eating journey. I haven't felt fit for a while now and with my forthcoming holiday to Florida this September I saw the opportunity to get fit and lose some weight.

Starting that journey at the same time as picking up TTIB was an interesting dichotomy.

Nancy's story made me realise how easy it is to become obsessed with watching what you eat, to let the thought of what you want to look like become so distorted that in the end it distorts reality. It also made me realise that eating disorders are ten times more complex than a lot of people are led to believe. The way it destructs her sense of self and turns her into a completely different person both inside and out was both harrowing and interesting. Interesting in the sense that we don't often get to hear about how a person with an eating disorder actually feels.

The reason I think TTIB is such an important book is because, as I said before, it does not shy away from the full horror of suffering from an eating disorder. Nancy shows us herself at her lowest point and also shows us how even when things appear to be getting better, the reality can be very different.

Nancy's writing style is very unique and her descriptions conjure vivid imagery, enough to make the reader recoil at times. But I think it is need in a book like TTIB. Nancy hasn't set out to only tell one side of the story, to romanticise any side of anorexia. She tells it like it was, the physical, emotional and social impact her illness had on her life is heartbreaking. But she also highlights how manipulative an eating disorder can make a person and I think that is important too. She shows not only how she was a victim but how the illness turned her into a person so unlike her usual self.

I applaud Nancy for telling her story, for being brave enough to write about something which consumed her for so long. Mental health, in particular (for me) eating disorders need to have more literature surrounding it. There needs to be an accurate representation of what a people go through when they suffer from such illnesses.

I work in a school and I see the pressure young girls are under every day. A lot of them can deal with that pressure and some are not phased. But there are those that cannot handle it and succumb to that niggling little voice inside their heads telling them that they need to look a certain way and must stop at nothing to get there. Those girls need books like TTIB to make them aware of the dangers before it is too late.

Mental health and it's treatment needs more awareness and more advocates.
The Time in Between is an important book that highlights this.
Read it.


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I would like to thank Stevie for allowing me to jump on this blog tour at the last minute!
The Time in Between is available in bookshops.
As part of the tour you can enter a Goodreads Giveaway to win a copy of the book!
Don't forget to take a look at the other stops on the tour. You could do this by searching the blog names or by searching #thetourinbetween on twitter.