Groomed by Jody Paschal
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Contemporary, Historical
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Groomed is a dark comedy coming-of-age story about Myles “Mylo” Gunn, a middle-aged man turning 50 during the 2020 global pandemic and #MeToo Movement. With nothing but downtime with his thoughts, Mylo reflects on what’s next in this new chapter of his life. Little does he know that watching a news exposé about an older politician grooming a teenager to be her husband is going to give him an unexpected reality check. The exposé sounds awfully similar to how his first marriage went, and Mylo realizes that he was groomed, too. Completely shocked by this new revelation, Mylo takes a deep dive into his past. But his trip down memory lane takes an unexpected detour. Groomed is a humorous, intriguing look at how misperception and manipulation can influence growing into ourselves.

It’s never too late to begin the healing process.

Mylo’s character development was strong and nuanced. One of the things I found most intriguing about him was how his abusive relationship stunted his social and emotional development and how he tried to heal from that terrible experience. He was a fifty-year-old man who still sometimes acted like the seventeen year old he’d been when the grooming began. It is not easy to write a character who has this many layers to his personality, especially since the author allowed so many of those layers to be revealed subtly through the way the protagonist reacted to small irritations in life or reminders of his past. The care and concern that was taken with making sure every aspect of Mylo’s life was represented and that his pain never overshadowed his honest and hardworking personality is something this reader noticed and appreciated quickly. Bravo for making this look so effortless and trusting one’s audience to notice these brief but important moments!

I did find myself wishing that the secondary characters had been given more time to be developed, especially when it came to April. Her reason for targeting Mylo made sense, but I would have loved to see it explored in greater depth. For example, knowing what sort of logic she used to justify the manipulative and cruel way she treated him and other people in her life would have been helpful whether it might have been due to how her personality formed, any past trauma she may have experienced, or something else entirely.

One of the biggest questions I had when I began reading this book involved what the responses of the people closest to Mylo were going to be when they learned he was dating a twenty-five year old woman while he was still in high school. Shouldn’t they have all been alarmed and disgusted? The answers to this question kept me reading as his friends and family members each came to their own conclusions about what was going on and how they should best respond to it. No, I can’t spoil anything by going into detail there, but I thought these passages were equally well written and an intelligent snapshot of what different parts of society thought of such things in the 1980s when society was generally less aware of or sensitive to the ways in which young men can be abused by the women in their lives.

Groomed was a thoughtful take on an important topic.