The Man He Never Was

The Man He Never Was
James L. Rubart
Thomas Nelson, 2018

When Toren wakes up in an unfamiliar hotel room he is shocked to find that he has no memory of the last eight months. He has no idea where he’s been, but he does know that something happened to him, something that changed him fundamentally. The unpredictable temper that cost him his job in the NFL and tore his family apart has been replaced with an unexplainable peace and patience. Toren is thrilled with the change, and eager to be the man he never was for his wife, Sloane, and their two children.

But Sloane is shocked at the sudden return after his mysterious disappearance and isn’t convinced that the change in him is real and permanent. Toren sets out to prove to her that he is a new man, while simultaneously investigating his mysterious absence. But as memories begin to surface and pieces of the mystery begin to fall into place, Toren struggles with the feeling that his peace is fading and the rage is crowding in again. He must go on an intense journey of faith and self-discovery if he has any hope of destroying that side of himself for good and winning back his family.

This post contains affiliate links. Read more about that here. Thanks to TLC Book Tours for sending me a copy of The Man He Never Was for review.

A man waking up with no memory of the past eight months of his life sounds like a pretty promising story, am I right? This book started off great, with Toren wrestling with the mystery surrounding his absence and trying to figure out how to step back into his life and family. I though the author did a great job of realistically portraying what his wife and kids might have felt when he showed up out of nowhere after they’d assumed he was dead, especially since their family had been on rocky ground before his disappearance.

Despite the good start and the complexity of the family relationships, I have to admit The Man He Never Was fell a little flat for me in the end. Don’t hear me saying it was bad, because I couldn’t find fault with the writing. I think it just wasn’t to my taste, mostly because it took a turn away from what I was anticipating, so I felt like my expectations were left unfulfilled. I was expecting the story to be a little darker and more nefarious, maybe with some questionable science and ethics involved in his internal change. But the story takes a more religious path for the explanation of why he feels different, which is great, it just caught me a little off guard.

There are a lot of spiritual, self-reflective type elements to Toren’s journey, which is not something I’m a huge fan of most of the time. Maybe a lack of introspection is a character flaw that reflects poorly on me as a person, but I just have a hard time getting into the kind of narrative that features these elements as a main theme and not just as threads that weave with others into the story. But if soul searching and internal examination are your jam then you would probably really enjoy The Man He Never Was!

I did really like the way this story is told as ‘a modern reimagining of Jekyll and Hyde’. As a fan of classic literature it was neat to see that book referenced and elements of that story absorbed into this one. Overall I would probably give The Man He Was a 3.5 out of 5 stars, because while the writing was cohesive and the story moved forward pretty quickly and smoothly, it just wasn’t for me.