Reviewed by nitzan_schwarz on
Please don't take out the pitchforks and torches, but I just don't get the huge love for this book. It's not a bad book by any means... but it's not great, either.
Pat's voice and inner monologue is so, so, so young. Here is a man who used to be a history teacher, and a coach, and by all means used to live a regular and normative life, even if he might have been mean to his wife (which, less be honest, he learned from his jerk of a father. His poor, poor mom). In the end, I couldn't grasp whether this inner voice was intentionally young, and if so--is this a result of you know what, or is this how it's always been? Either way, it made me uncomfortable to think of this man (who sounded like a boy in my head no matter how much I tried giving him a more grownup voice) being married.
Then there is the fact in the end, I felt like nothing was properly explained. I waited almost 95% of the book to hear the story (which honestly kind of pissed me off, because the only reason I was interested is to figure out what the fuck happened in his past), and still there were a ton of holes and unclear information and even at the end of the novel I didn't have a full picture, and for some people this might be just fine and dandy but I ended up feeling awfully cheated by the whole thing.
And then, one can't ignore this being a kind of mediocre love story at best. (show spoiler)[At the end of the day, this story is supposed to chronicle both the healing of Pat and his love story with Tiffany. Only we get nothing of that sort. Instead, we get a lukewarm insta love on Tiffany's end, and no feeling of love on Pat's. He was still all Nikki, Nikki, Nikki up to the last chapter, for god's sake! I couldn't sense any feelings of love from his end, only a mild awakening perhaps to the small possibility of maybe] .
To me, this book failed on many levels. I can't say it's a bad book because in all honesty, it made me tear up in places and I felt for some of the characters, but I also can't say I thought it was a good book. I really wanted to adore this :(
Side-note: I think this probably worked a lot better as a movie, which I do plan to watch at some sort. Taking out Pat's narration will immediately take away one of the things I didn't connect with, and let's be honest - It's easy to believe someone will fall in love with JLaw as she is such a beautiful lady, so I could probably believe the love story as well haha
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 2 October, 2016: Finished reading
- 2 October, 2016: Reviewed