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About the Book

The perfect memoir for Christmas 2023! The much-anticipated concluding book in this best-selling series.

After 12 years of being trapped in the world of one room by the M.E. Monster, Jessica’s dreams start to come true. She’s pregnant! But Jessica has to adjust to being a disabled mum in an inaccessible world and face the critics who doubt her abilities. And when the pandemic hits just as they relocate to a new county, isolation takes on a new form, as they learn to adjust to being a family of three in one flat limited by government-enforced restrictions and fear of contracting Covid.

Balancing parenthood and chronic illness, expectations versus reality, Jessica discovers alternative fairytale endings are possible… a life beyond closed doors.

About the Author

Jessica Taylor-Bearman was born in March 1991, at Maidstone Hospital in England. She grew up in Rochester and Canterbury, Kent, where she attended Rochester Grammar School for Girls. At the age of 15, she became acutely unwell with an illness called M.E. She was continuously hospitalised from 2006 to 2010, suffering with the most severe form of the condition. This included her being bedridden, unable to move, speak, eat and more. She began to write in her mind, and when finally able to speak again, she began to write through her audio diary ‘Bug’.

Taylor-Bearman is the number 1 bestselling author of A Girl Behind Dark Glasses and A Girl In One Room which shares her real life experience with living with M.E (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis). Jessica writes a blog called The World of One Room and has a YouTube video of the same name that has reached tens of thousands of people in multiple countries. Jessica has also featured in a film called Unrest. She is an advocate for raising awareness of M.E. A Girl Behind Dark Glasses has stayed on the bestsellers list since its release in 2018.

Jessica lives with her husband and two children in Essex.

What I Thought

As someone living with and working with people living with Long Covid, earlier this year I read the first two books in Jessica’s series. A Girl Behind Dark Glasses shows the start of Jessica’s experience with severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME – also referred to by Jessica as the ME Monster). This book frustrated me as much as Jessica awed me. The frustration comes from how Jessica was treated particularly by healthcare alongside the knowledge that similar attitudes are being faced today by those with Long Covid. Please note book one has a trigger warning for sexual abuse also.

A Girl In One Room follows Jessica’s online dating experience and her challenge to develop into adulthood as someone who needs a high level of care.

So when Literally PR said they were looking for bloggers to read the final book in the series A Girl Behind Closed Doors I definitely jumped at the chance.

I knew that this book of the three would be a harder read for me because it focuses on pregnancy and motherhood – something that for a number of reasons I don’t think will happen for me now.

But neither did Jessica.

We follow Jessica’s entire pregnancy – from the range of reactions she experiences to it, to multiple hospitalisations and past the birth of her first child. We also cross over with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic which has sadly added more people to those who share a similar healthcare experience to Jessica. There is research ongoing to explore the overlap between ME and Long Covid, with some people with Long Covid already getting diagnosed with ME.

I love the chatty style that the books are written in, it makes them so readable. And despite this, Jessica doesn’t sugar coat her experience, sharing with us the lowest lows as well as the highest highs. Many people with disabilities will recognise the ableist attitudes that often face people who live a disabled life.

A big question some people might have is, is this the story of someone that overcomes their disability. The answer to that is No. Disability is not always something that can be overcome. It is something that we live with on a daily basis. And sometimes it really sucks.

But does that mean we can’t live fulfilling lives? Not at all. And the A Girl series demonstrates this beautifully. It is not about an inspirational person’s journey to overcome adversity to climb a mountain, but about an ordinary woman with goals of sitting up, finding someone to love and being the best parent they can be. Inspiration in the everyday.

I did like how the story was bought full circle with people from book one making an appearance in this final book. And a big message for me is to try hard to be one of the people that others would be happy to see again later in life, the support network, rather than someone you’d want kept away from you behind closed doors!

A huge thank you to Jessica for sharing her experience, raising awareness for those living with severe ME and to Literally PR for the gifted copy for the purposes of an honest review. I definitely recommend this series.