Member Reviews
This book had a lot of heartfelt emotion from the author. Unfortunately, I couldn’t connect with her writing because I’ve not had to deal with this kind of tragedy. I feel like this book could be something that I may need to re-read in the future. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy.
Powerful and spot on reflection on grief by a therapist. I have pressed this book into so many hands of friends and customers seeking grief books that aren’t depressing—just helpful and human. It is also really, really well written.
This book was extremely powerful. I have a daughter who is not necessarily struggling with grief or trauma, but is dealing with the effects of anxiety, and reading this book helped me to understand a little better how she feels on a day to day basis. It was eye-opening to see how quickly guilt can spiral out of control and turn into something much more debilitating. I appreciate Meghan sharing her story and j highly recommend this memoir.
The End of the Hour resonated so deeply with me. I lost three family members over the course of three months, and two of them were completely unexpected. One death is difficult to say this least, but throwing them all together in such a short time made for a numbing experience, and this book helped me to see ways in which to be gentle and patient with myself. I had no idea what grief really looked like, so at times, I felt that I was doing it wrong. This book was like a gentle friend walking alongside me telling me that it was okay to feel the feelings in any way they came.
I thank Meghan for being so vulnerable and sharing her experiences with the world. Her writing is a gift, and this book is one I will treasure for years to come.
Thank you to Meghan Riordan Jarvis, Zibby Books and NetGalley for an advance e-copy of this book for an honest review.
In End of the Hour, Meghan Riordan Jarvis takes us on a journey where you feel like you’re right next to her thanks to her vivid descriptions. My toes are in the sand with her. I’m next to her as she receives bad news. I’m with her in the goodbye circle. I’m there with her every step of the way.
And I find myself in her more than once. I wonder about my own grief journey. My own parenting skills when I was in the throes of grief. My own familial relationships.
Thank you Meghan for your beautiful words and imagery. You’ve shared from your rawest moments and it’s a gift.
End of the Hour by Meghan Riordan Jarvis is a deeply moving journey through the profound impact of grief on an esteemed trauma therapist. This poignant memoir explores the unexpected unraveling of her own emotional world when confronted with the loss of both parents. Jarvis’s brave story, filled with emotional honesty, chronicles her path from therapist to patient, offering a powerful narrative for anyone grappling with the enduring force of grief.
It is hard to review memoirs but I am going to try. This is a grief memoir by a trauma therapist who checked herself into a mental health facility because the compound grief of loosing both her parents one expectedly the other one unexpectedly in a rather short timespan and realizing she can not work or parent in her current state. This book written with openness and candor while also pulling on the learned knowledge of being a trauma therapist herself was relatable and readable. Through openness and true vulnerability it broke the barrier of our socially accepted privacy of grief and burdened the reader with raw grief while explaining what grief does or at the very least can do to body and mind.
I was doubly excited to read this book since I met Meghan virtually at #zibbysvirtualbookclub and loved her insightful comments on books we read. She is smart! If you want to give her work a try before committing to the whole book you have that option since she also hosts a brilliant weekly podcast: Grief Is My Sidehustle.
I received the eARC for this beautiful book - I love the floating couch - from @zibbybooks through @netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Meghan Jarvis is a trauma therapist who ended up going through her own journey of trauma therapy after the deaths of both of her parents in a short amount of time. Even though she knew how to help her patients process through grief, she needed the help of others to walk her through her own grieving process. Jarvis writes with such honesty and humility on a topic that many aren’t willing to write about, let alone talk about. I couldn’t help but be moved by her words.
Rating:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Read if you like:
Memoirs
Honest looks at trauma and grief therapy
Thank you @Zibbybooks for a #gifted ARC, moleskine journal, and super cozy socks.
I just finished the book. I am still trying to gather my thoughts about it. The book is honest and deep.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis, a trauma therapist, bravely shares her journey about grief with raw honesty. Even though it's heavy, it reminds us we're not alone in our struggles. The author's willingness to share such a heavy subject reflects immense courage. I am so glad I had the opportunity to read this book.
Thank you Zibby Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
Let me state from the outset that I am not a "memoir reader," so Meghan Riordan Jarvis has totally changed my mind with her excellent END OF THE HOUR. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, her book shares a deep and engaging view into the world of a therapist, heartfelt and mind smart, giving her all to the ones who trust her with their deepest, darkest, and most shallow issues. I was surprised to enjoy it as much as I did -- and will be recommending it far and wide. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis a trauma therapist has written a raw intimate account of her life her struggles her parents death.She seeks therapy to help her cope .I was drawn in to her life her struggles she gave me a lot to think about really well written.#netgalley #zibbybooks
This memoir is deeply vulnerable and I was completely impacted by it. It follows Meghan's , a trauma therapist, journey as she navigates through the loss of her parents. As a therapist myself I found Megan’s authenticity and rawness so refreshing and I learned so much from her process. Grief is such a personal process for everyone but there needs to be more conversations about it. More openness and understanding. This is the perfect read for anyone that has lost someone or knows someone that has.
Recently I was speaking to a friend about her own loss. We both were able to share moments, when processing and dealing with our own grief, where people said the most ridiculous things in an attempt to console us. So many people don’t always know how to approach conversations surrounding grief and this book will shed light on that and how to better respond to people when they are struggling.
@zibbybooks does such a wonderful job of finding authors that are relatable and impactful. They bring perspective to conversations and make you think more deeply about yourself and the world. This is my 3rd Zibby book and another one I highly recommend.
5 stars
Thank you @zibbybooks and @netgalley for the early copy!
This raw memoir by Meghan Riordan Jarvis was emotional and heartfelt. She does an incredible job of diving into her past and the losses of her life. Trauma and grief touch so many, and I have also lost my parents to long painful death.
It takes courage to seek therapy, and I am glad Megan who is a therapist, saw that she could benefit from therapy as well. Delve into an honest fresh memoir.
Thank you Zibby Books and Happy Pub Day Megan.
This was an emotionally powerful and first-hand look at trauma, loss and the devastation it can cause. What happens when the therapist healing the trauma of others experiences devastating trauma herself? That’s what we learn in this unflinchingly honest memoir. Meghan Riordan Jarvis invites us into her childhood, her journey into adulthood and her experiences with trauma and loss that impacted her daily living. We see the effects of her early experiences, the hard journey she took to overcome them, the series of losses that broke her heart and her unrelenting spirit to keep pushing through. Part memoir, part personal development, I felt intricately connected to Megan’s story and equally inspired to try the various techniques she describes throughout the book to make my own life better, too. This was an incredibly moving book.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the e-ARC. This is a reflective and well written account of a therapist grappling with her own struggles. Meghan writes with a lot of warmth and insightful reflection.
It's not weird that I learned so much about myself reading a memoir about a therapist who checks herself into the same in-patient care facility she sent her patients to, right? That's what makes The End of the Hour, by Meghan Riordan Jarvis, so powerful is that you are walking in Meghan's steps as she retraces the root of her childhood trauma and explores how it was re-triggered following a very upsetting event in her life.
Through it all, I've learned about myself and reflected on my life choices. I also appreciated learning about the different approaches to therapy in general. A must read for anyone interested in this topic!
Loved Meghan’s raw honesty about her experience and what she’s gone through. As a mom, it was very relatable in putting others first and then questioning if you’re being a good mom. I was brought to tears when it came to learning about her phone calls as the treatment facility being listened to…so beautiful!
Thank you Zibby for The End of the Hour. This memoir from Meghan Riordan Jarvis is moving, deep, and resonated deeply with me for many reasons. I am always in for a particularly introspective memoir, one that gets that life is messy but humans are resilient; that at times we find ourselves in spaces and seasons of life that we are both prepared and unprepared for at the same time.... End of the Hour is this for me. Jarvis finds herself in a season filled with loss and grief and though a therapist who helps others navigate grief, she finds herself overwhelmed by it herself but then also able to learn from herself, her patients, and come to deeper understandings and insights.
I love this kind of read, it reminds me in moments of how it feels to teach developmental psych and to find myself more and more connected to some themes on midlife, on being a mother and a woman, on being more fully present in placing context and identity and the pandemic together for myself and for my students.
This memoir is a big yes for me and I am appreciative to Zibby books once more for supporting a range of wonderful voices (and for the kind book package that was sent to me for this book).
I appreciated the vulnerability and honesty of a trauma therapist who gets pulled under by her own trauma and compound losses. Grief has sucked Meghan under and witnessing her struggles provided insight into how even someone trained in coping mechanisms sometimes can’t help herself out of the consequences of profound loss on top of childhood trauma.
I have a difficult time rating memoirs because regardless of my reading experience, I want to honor and acknowledge the author’s journey and who am I to rate the telling of their story? However my one criticism is the transitions felt sometimes jarring which took me out of the story. I am hoping this was improved in the final version of this book.
This debut memoir is deeply affecting. I read it in one sitting, I picked it up and did not put it down until I read the last word. The author’s story gives us permission to understand that grief, like trauma, is complicated. Everyone must walk through it at their own pace, there isn’t one way to go about it, nor is it something you get over. What you will get from reading this book, is finding out that you're not alone.
With profound and astute wisdom, Meghan shares her innermost thoughts, not only as a professional trauma psychotherapist but as a daughter who had a charmed, loving relationship with her parents. How she went from losing her father to lung cancer and not long after to the sudden death of her mother while visiting over a summer vacation. Meghan shares more than grief in her story. In discovering her trauma, which stemmed from a childhood incident she carried with her into adulthood, a lasting impression with panic always ready to bubble over until the day it did and she, this capable woman who had been a caregiver since she was a little girl, now needed to be taken care of herself. This is the telling of how she went from therapist to patient.
If you’ve ever wondered how we bury not only our loved ones but incidents in our lives that we aren’t able to face or don’t have the tools to do so, this is both a caring and tender exploration of a personal story interspersed with an experienced perspective, offering insight into how our minds and bodies often play tricks on us to protect and help us cope.
No one person or book can tell you how to grieve but I firmly believe that listening to other people’s stories and how they’ve handled the process of grieving can offer a much-needed voice that whispers, here, let me show you some ways that helped me, that might help you too.
With every chapter, every emotion, I felt a connection to the author, what she was going through. Her words lifted off the page, permeated my very being, seeped into my heart, my mind, the daughter in me as I related to how it felt being in the world without one parent, then another, the profound loss that comes with it, the during, the after, the therapy, the now, that ached alongside her, that felt comforted by feeling understood.
When you “can’t stop the leaving” yet you know time isn’t going to stand still, END OF THE HOUR is a loving guide. And perhaps, if you believe, a butterfly might come along and share the path.
Read if you like memoirs written by Claire Bidwell Smith, Meghan O’Rourke, Dani Shapiro, Kathryn Schulz, Sarah McColl, Emily Rapp.
Thank you to NetGalley, Zibby Books, and Meghan Riordan Jarvis, for this ARC, a most generous reading experience, in exchange for my honest review.