After I Do

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

[Leah]

I was very excited to be invited to take part in Taylor Jenkins Reid’s blog tour for After I Do! Taylor’s debut novel Forever, Interrupted was released to lots and lots of positive reviews last year, and I’m almost sure it’s sitting on my Kindle somewhere – story of my life that I can never keep up with the books I want to read! But it was quite exciting to get to read Taylor’s new book! I wanted to see if all the hype was worth it, if she was such an awesome author as everyone says she is and I was very intrigued with the synopsis of the novel – a lot of novels lead up to marriage, or deal with the demise of marriage, but not a lot have a trial separation that we get to see! I enjoyed the novel, Taylor is a very exciting author and I very much can see why everyone loved her debut novel!

After I Do opens with Lauren and Ryan leaving a Dodgers game – Lauren is sure they parked their car in Block C, but Ryan is having none of it, in just a short space of time, it tells us that Lauren and Ryan are perhaps struggling in their relationship. Little snide remarks, unkind smiles. We then spin back to the day they met and we unfurl their love story like a beautiful little flower, until it starts to wither and die the way a romance like theirs never should. From their beautiful beginnings at College, to almost thirty-somethings, it was kind of hard to see such a beautiful relationship collapse, because I was captivated with their relationship from the very start, and it came as something of a relief when they both realised this wasn’t working and that they were making each other miserable. It’s a brave step – a lot of couples would just carry on as they were, in stasis, but Lauren and Ryan were pro-active – they decided to pause their relationship for a year and come back 12 months later stronger and hopefully more in love with each other than they’ve ever been…

The novel asks a lot of questions – as I said, not many novels deal with a couple taking a break, because usually the break means its indefinite. That the couple will never get back together, as Lauren’s brother so aptly points out. But, actually, it was interesting to see how the break helped Lauren and Ryan, separately and together. One of my favourite parts of the novel were the emails they wrote to each other, but never sent. Perhaps it was a bit sneaky if you think about it too deeply, but I thought it was actually really sweet – that Lauren cared enough to sneak a peek into Ryan’s email account. I also loved that Lauren didn’t just focus on Ryan – she has the most amazing family! It was so lovely to see her interact with her siblings, and her mom, it was very much a family novel, and I LOVED it. I love novels where the family just get on… There are no issues, no dramas, they all love each other like a family should. It was super refreshing.

Jenkins Reid is such a clever writer. I loved Lauren’s narration, she was such a wonderful character and I loved her journey – she has a few, actually. There’s her journey with her family, her journey with Ryan, her journey as a newly (and unexpectedly)-single woman… She deals with it all with such grace, and I liked that she didn’t become a wailing banshee, as many a wife would perhaps consider. After I Do was a great look into modern marriage and since I’m a believer of making a marriage work – why make your vows if you aren’t going to bother to keep them (celebrities I AM LOOKING AT YOU) and just because you hit a rough patch doesn’t mean you ought to just give up and roll over and die. I absolutely loved the book – it made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me feel happy about love all over again, in all its many forms. I can’t wait to go back and read Forever, Interrupted. I lapped it all up, and I think Taylor is such a wonderful writer.