Dear Thing

by Julie Cohen

[Leah]

When I read Getting Away With It by Julie Cohen back in 2010, I loved it. It was an absolutely amazing novel. It was fresh, it was fast paced, it had a plot I’d never read before… It was everything I wanted in a Chick Lit novel and so I had high hopes for Cohen’s next novel The Summer of Living Dangerously, which, for me, sadly fell flat on its face. So when I heard about her new novel, despite the disappointment of her previous novel, I was really excited about Dear Thing. It sounded like a departure from her previous works, a bit of a new direction, and I was interested to see if it would be a good thing or a bad thing. Sadly for me, I didn’t enjoy Dear Thing as much as I wanted.

The concept of Dear Thing is fantastic – Claire and Ben, a happily married couple have everything they could ever dream of, except for a baby, so when Romily, Ben’s best friend, offers to be their surrogate, they suddenly see their dreams of having a child come true. But Romily’s intentions aren’t exactly pure, and her feelings for Ben, feelings that have been bubbling away under the surface for years, become a lot more intense once she’s pregnant with his baby and she begins to doubt if giving up the baby is something she can do. Romily’s life is made even harder when her daughter Posie’s father comes back onto the scene after years away. Like I say, the concept is fantastic, it’s a brilliant idea, and it is very well executed, I just I suppose if I’m being brutally honest, I just found it a bit boring. It’s not a topic that’s something I can relate to, I’m 22, babies and everything to do with that just isn’t in my thoughts at all (if it ever will be), and while I read the novel, and could feel sorry for the characters, it wasn’t really my kind of book, it didn’t resonate with me.

Dear Thing is definitely a novel that will resonate with the masses, it’s a very emotional novel, filled with all the horrors and worries you’d expect when you’re pregnant (in the case of Romily) and expecting a baby (in the case of Claire). One of the more difficult aspects of the novel, the bit I most disagreed with, was that although what Romily agreed to do was a magnificent thing (imagine, being the type of person who could do that for another person) she didn’t do it selflessly, she did it selfishly. She didn’t do it out of the good of her heart, she did it because she wanted Ben’s baby, and I didn’t agree with it. I like a bit of unrequited love, it speaks to me, but not that way. Not in that way at all and as such, I couldn’t really resonate with Romily. I didn’t really feel anything for her because I felt she was acting under false pretences and, if anything, it made me a lot more sympathetic to Claire who was oblivious. (Though I thought women were way more perceptive than that.)

So, no, sadly Dear Thing wasn’t my type of read. I read it, I took it in, but I’m not its target market which is totally fine with me. It was very emotional, very touching, and Cohen is a warm writer, but it just wasn’t what I wanted to read. Maybe if I came back to it in 5 years or so it would resonate more and I’d be able to feel it a bit more, but as I am it didn’t. If I’m honest, I want Julie to write another book like Getting Away With It, because it was awesome, but I can appreciate that her writing has evolved since then and has taken a more serious approach to novel writing and it’s something a lot of people will absolutely adore, just not me. I will look out for Julie Cohen’s next novel, as I do enjoy her writing, I do think she’s very talented, I just take to some plots better than others, and some books are easier for me to relate to, easier for me to understand and digest and perhaps this time around, I’m just a bit too young to really appreciate what Cohen was doing with Dear Thing, but it’s definitely one I will re-read at some point when I’m a bit more grown-up and can understand and appreciate the novel a bit more.