I wanted to like this book a whole lot more than I actually did. This author has been recommended to me as someone who has a good feel of the pulse of real life and issues of women today. Maybe so, but this novel didn't sell me. Perhaps the biggest disconnects for me were in two elements, rooted in today's world, that bug the bejiggers out of me. The first is that yes, we do have a lot of technology, with computers, email, texts, and skype, but I really don't like to have my reading world completely infiltrated by that as well as my real world. I'm one of the few people I know who sets a limit on personal computer use, and won't regularly use it after a certain time in the evening unless for a specific need. Phone goes off, too, at a regular time, only allowing emergency calls from family. Yet throughout this book, electronic communication, even when connections were bad, substituted for personal interactions.
The second plot device that really, really irritated me was the intrusion of something into the story that I have made a conscious decision to avoid:
Fifty Shades of Gray. There was way more about a book I have no desire to read or talk about in this novel than I cared for. It was not a successful plot element for this reader, even though the author was using it in a particular manner to advance the story and define certain characters.
As to Julia, a whole lot could have been worked out much easier and earlier, if instead of insisting on talking, then storming off without really speaking, the characters actually
talked. Now there's a novel idea.
Thanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewers program and the publisher for sending me this book. I'm sorry I didn't like it.
Plot summary available
here.
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