Author: Richard Cohen
Release Date: – (ARC)
Series: –
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Relationships
Edition: E-book
Pages: 356
Publisher:  Createspace

Rating: ★★★

Blurb:

Estranged twins Brian and Amy are sixty years old when chance throws them together at a party. A blow-up on Amy’s part sets them on a course that leads to the reconciliation of their love, friendship, and emotional attachment. Years of no communication, petty differences and pent up anger, wiped away their comfort,friendship and love. A tragedy for twins who were inseparable as children. In the midst of a wedding reception Amy makes a public spectacle of herself and becomes enraged at her brother and throws down the gauntlet that she can run a marathon, as her brother had done eighteen times before. Facing humiliation, Amy sets out to train and run a marathon while losing over eighty pounds. Through the pains, pride, honesty and self-reflection of running, Amy gains contentment and happiness that she always yearned for, which money and materials never could fulfill. With a much improved sense of self and a feeling of pride and confidence, Amy opens herself up to regain what she had lost with her brother– love and friendship.

Review

Running: The Best Cure For The Worst Relationship by Richard Cohen is a light-hearted contemporary read centered around running.

I liked the basic concept of the story and the story build-up was decent. I did like the main characters but was not able to feel a strong connection with them. They were likable enough for me to read this book till the end to see how things end for them and for me that was a relief.

The story is about a twin brother and sister duo, Brian and Amy, who are kind of estranged and cross path after a while in an unsuspecting wedding where they end up in a bet in which Amy, who is fat and unfit, decides to run a marathon. As I said earlier, the concept was really interesting and the story turned out to be really good by the end, but there were a few issues with it that made me rate this book lower than I would have loved to rate it otherwise.

First of all, there was endless head-hopping. The story was written in the third-person omniscient narration and the POV shifts were understandable, but what I didn’t like was the abrupt shifts in POVs. There were some POVs of secondary characters too but only for a couple of paragraphs in between the POVs of the main characters. And that was really off-putting, to say the least.

Secondly, the story progression felt a bit slack due to continuous and abrupt change in timelines. In one paragraph you’re in present, the next one you’re reading about 20 years younger Brian. These timeline shifts were not technically right so it was also a bit of a downer.

Other than these two issues, though, there was nothing major that affected the book in a negative way. The story is good and I’m sure that if you can see past, or completely ignore, the technicalities of fiction writing (which, for the life of me, I can’t) then I’m sure you’ll enjoy this story.