There is no meant to be but the love I've known has made it hard to believe that

An inventive, funny and deeply moving family epic: a love story, an elegy and a reminder that even in the mess of family and memory there is something to laugh about

AN OBSERVER NON-FICTION BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026

'A wild ride' JON McGREGOR

'Raw and intimate, so daring and disobedient' SARAH HALL

'The most beautiful and truthful song to the pain present in a good life' EVIE WYLD

Jarred McGinnis was born to a Southern US clan where masculinity, resilience and physical violence were intertwined. In There Is No Meant to Be he unearths the legends, secrets and scars that have shaped his family line from his outlaw Irish ancestors to his mother Momo's gift of foresight, and the ghosts - both real and remembered - that follow him into adulthood.

Two decades on from the near-fatal accident that left him in a wheelchair, McGinnis is married and the father of two girls, living first in East London and now Marseille. He writes about love within the context of care and of the particular vulnerability that comes from being a parent with a disability. In a daring imaginative leap, he writes of the end of life too, reaching beyond his own death to look at what truly makes a life.

'Caustic, hilarious, unflinchingly honest and so captivatingly humane, I couldn't put this book down' JAN CARSON

'In a world teetering on madness, here is an ode to truth, courage, and the beautiful power of vulnerability' ELAINE FEENEY

'A multi-layered, many-textured masterpiece' CHARLIE GILMOUR