Note: I am on a mission this year. I've never been much of a reader, despite my love of writing. In the past year and a half, I've grown to enjoy reading. I am notorious for buying books but not immediately reading them. It's been that way for a while now. I seem to have a complex with "ideas." For example, I like the idea of snow much better than actual snow; I like the idea of school much better than attending school. Much was the same with reading for a long time; I really liked the idea of reading and the idea of me as a reader, but I didn't like to actually sit and read a book. I had shelves of books in my bedroom as a teenager, none of which had ever been read. I'm trying to change that. Currently, thanks to my book-buying addiction, I have a list of 20 books in my backlog. I want to have them all read by the end of the year. To help keep track of them, and also for writing material, I'm going to be writing book reviews for each book I successfully read. At the end of each book review, I will list the next book in the backlog I'm planning to read, perhaps with a purchase summary. Here is the first review of 2011.
I Take This Man, by Valerie Frankel
When I first saw this book, it was in the clearance section of Barnes & Noble. It cost $5. I was just a few months shy of being married myself, so the subject matter excited me. At first glance, this book seems to be about a wedding, and at the beginning, it is. But for the most part, this book is about a mother's love for her daughter.
The story begins on the day of Penny and Bram's wedding. Penny is finishing up getting ready with Vita, her maid of honor, and her mother in the room with her, just minutes before the ceremony starts at a very ritzy hotel. A knock on the door bring the best man with a note written by the groom, saying that he can't go through with the wedding and that he's sorry. Everyone is shocked, but Esther, Penny's mom, won't go down without a fight.
Warning: spoilers follow here.
Esther goes to Bram's room, where she catches him just leaving. In an angry, protective rage, she bashes Bram over the head with an unopened champagne bottle. He falls, unconscious. Esther lugs his body and his luggage into the luggage cart for the hotel and covers them up with the bedspread from the hotel bed. She pushes the cart into the elevator and goes to her car in the parking garage. After she finally gets Bram and his suitcase into her car, she drives to her house, just a couple of miles from the hotel. She gets the housekeeper, Natasha, to help her lug Bram's body up the stairs and into Penny's old playroom. The lock him in and the torture begins. Esther uses an intercom system to communicate with Bram in the playroom. Joining the playroom is a bathroom, where Bram showers and relieves himself. While he's asleep or in the shower or bathroom, Natasha sneaks a platter of food that was meant for the wedding reception into his room. By the end of the book, Bram has eaten his fair share of reception food. Esther forces Bram to write personal letter of apology to each guest, and verbally tortures him through the intercom system.
Meanwhile, Bram's widower father, Keith, is desperately worried about his son's whereabouts. Over the course of four or five days, Keith and the divorced/widowed Esther begin to fall for each other. Esther's late husband and Penny's father is the center of a mysterious murder-suicide. No one can put the pieces together for how he died; he "fell" from the upstairs balcony and into the large fountain in the center of the mall.
Penny, on the other hand, has taken a liking to the idea of not being tied down by marriage or a relationship anymore. She begins to explore her freedom and goes on shopping sprees for pointless things like huge red high heels and dog pet accessories. Penny soon discovers Bram in the playroom and also talks to him via intercom; she tries to find answers for why he abandoned her, while pretending to be Esther. Doing this, she finally gets some answers to her questions. Vita shacks up with the best man. Bram, through careful planning and slight insanity, finds a way out of the room through the skylight in the ceiling. Once he's on the roof, he has no way out but to jump into the pool from the top of the three-story house. He makes his jump just as Penny is getting into the pool for a quick swim. Once she realizes it's Bram, they have a long talk and reconnect. They realize that most of their problems have come from sexual frustration in their relationship, with Penny only faking orgasms and Bram painfully realizing it every time they have sex. They go into the cabana by the pool and are finally able to come together. Penny leaves Bram a note the next morning saying she can't be with him anymore, and that their relationship has run it course. Bram is hurt, thinking that their time in the cabana meant a reunion, where Penny saw a final goodbye.
Keith discovers Esther's secret when Bram walks back to the hotel from the cabana after receiving Penny's note. Bram shows up in Keith's room, finds him in bed with Esther, and then reveals the secrets of the past few days. Keith is furious with Esther and literally throws her out of his hotel room. Esther's neighbor, Ashely, is seen going into the hotel, presumably to Keith's room, since she had shown interest in him for most the book. Ashley admits to pushing Esther's dead husband over the railing in the mall when Esther became pregnant with Penny and he told Ashley he couldn't be her lover anymore. Penny comes up behind her and bashes her in the head with an unopened champagne bottle. The gun Ashely had been holding Keith and Esther at gunpoint with grazes Keith and he is sent to the hospital, along with Bram.
Esther returns home to find that Natasha has packed up and left town for good. In one of the drawers in her empty chest of drawers, Penny and Esther find an envelope with the plane tickets for Penny and Bram's honeymoon to Hawaii and one voucher for limo service to the airport. The plant tickets are good for the next day, and following the last few days' events, Penny and Esther decide to use the trip to get away for a while. They pack and call and arrange the limo service. The car shows up the next morning and it is revealed that the car is actually from Keith's limo service and he and Bram are waiting in a secret location for the girls. They meet up, and all confess their love for each other. Keith and Esther take the limo to the airport for the Hawaii trip, while Bram and Penny agree to see where their relationship goes one day at a time, and head back to the house.
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I enjoyed this book. Valerie Frankel had been talked up as a hysterical writer, and I was excited to read the abundant humor, but didn't find that much. The book was whimsical, and at some parts, I did laugh out loud, but for the most part, the book didn't have me rolling in the floor. The content was good, I did want to know what happened next, and because romance is my favorite genre (so far,) I liked reading the lovey-dovey parts. I feel like Valerie put too much content into the book. She managed to wrap up nearly all loose ends, and for that I definitely commend her. I don't think every character needed to be given a story, nor did they need to have a part in the main story. But she did indeed give every character a story, and some link to the main story. I feel like the back story of Natasha definitely could have been left out; I didn't find that interesting at all. I liked how all the characters were intertwined, but Valerie didn't try to create suspicion Ashley's account at all in the book, she simply confessed to the crime at the end. I feel like the characters should have been sprinkled throughout the book, despite Bram being in Penny's playroom the major focal point of the book. Instead, they were all introduced back-to-back of each other at the beginning and then everyone's story came crashing down at the end. It was too much at both ends. I would have enjoyed them each getting equal "screen time." But the book was good, and like I said, I enjoyed it. It's a good example of Chick Lit, and endorses girl power. A worthy pass-the-time read. 3/5.
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For Next Time
The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks
Set amid the austere beauty of coastal North Carolina in 1946, The Notebook begins with the story of Noah Calhoun, a rural Southerner returned home from World War II. Noah, 31, is restoring a plantation home to its former glory, and he is haunted by images of the beautiful girl he met 14 years earlier, a girl he loved like no other. Unable to find her, yet unwilling to forget the summer they spent together, Noah is content to live with only memories...until she unexpectedly returns to his town to see him once more. Allie Nelson, 29, is now engaged to another man, but realizes that the original passion she felt for Noah has not dimmed with the passage of time. Still, the obstacles that once ended their previous relationship remain, and the gulf between their worlds is too vast to ignore. With her impending marriage only weeks away, Allie is forced to confront her hopes and dreams for the future, a future that only she can shape. Like a puzzle within a puzzle, the story of Noah and Allie is just the beginning. As it unfolds, their tale miraculously becomes something different, with much higher stakes. The result is a deeply moving portrait of love itself, the tender moments and the fundamental changes that affect us all.
-bn.com
