Inside Out Girl

Inside Out Girl
Tish Cohen
Harper Perennial
ISBN: 978-0-06-145295-6
Fiction, Contemporary
Reviewed by Mona Lisa Safai

Tish Cohen writes Inside Out Girl, a novel about a single mother, Rachel, trying to raise two children. She is the publisher of a parenting magazine her father left to her and while she has a job, she’s barely making ends meet. As a parent, she is overprotective with her children.

Out of character, she stops to help a man on the highway with a flat tire. He has a daughter, who later she discovers suffers from NLD (non-verbal learning disorder). The man, Len, a single father is a family law attorney devoted to caring for his daughter. The two become begin dating.

This is a story about family, love, loss, and acceptance. During their relationship, Len learns he has a brain tumor and becomes fearful of who will take care of his daughter, Olivia since he has only been given a short time to live. Rachel, on the other hand, reveals a secret from her past which involves a child she gave for adoption years ago. The unresolved feelings between the two adults sound off but they do not listen to each other.

Cohen writes the plot in a somewhat predictable fashion. The character development is fair to say the best. If the reader is able to follow the main storyline, the subtext gets completely lost in between the character’s actions and tantrums. Somehow, the actually meaning of what Cohen is trying to convey falls on the wayside.