In this compelling novel, Jay Chirino channels his own struggles with depression and addiction, creating a universal story that is painfully relatable for those with similar issues, and eye-opening for the ones that haven’t dealt with the challenges of mental illness.
After leaving behind a trail of drug-addled destruction, Jay finds himself confined to the walls of a psychiatric hospital, forced for the first time to confront his darkest demons.
He begins to journey through the torture of reliving painful memories without anything to blur them, forced to truly look at himself in the mirror and confront the reality of what he has become. He must now find his way back through the thick brushes of pain, regret, and childhood trauma. With the help of a doctor that seems to truly care about him, Jay starts to relive the past and to deal with the things that brought him here.
On his first night he meets Jerry, his roommate, a friendly and lovable drug addict who lost everything to the post-traumatic stress disorder he had due to his deployments to the middle east. Jerry is leaving the next day, but he arranges for his friend Bob to stay in his old bed, in the same room as Jay. Bob is an older, well dressed, religious man, very different from the other patients that Jay has met. They quickly become friends, and Bob helps him find a spiritual side to him Jay thought he’d lost a long time ago.
Before leaving, Jerry cautions Jay about something else. “Be careful with the little one,” he says. Jay is not sure what he is talking about, but when he wakes up the next morning to a hyperventilating young woman in his room, he starts to think it may be too late to yield Jerry’s advice.
The Flawed Ones is a thorough examination of the struggles of mental illness, depression, addiction, and the effects they have on the human condition. Most importantly, it proves that physical and mental shortcomings do not necessarily define who we truly are inside- that the heart is, in fact, untouched by our “flaws”, and that love will always prevail above all.