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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It made me wish that my Life was there to talk to me . That there was someone who would always understand, know me better than i know myself. It is a simple wish, a dream almost!
For all intents and purposes, this is a 2.5 given that, in a Cecelia Ahern scale, I liked The Book Of Tomorrow less than I did this one.
I've been a passive-aggressive Ahern reader for about 10 years now. I've read a good bunch of her books when I was younger. I discovered her when I was in my late teens and I enjoyed her books because they were a) self-conclusive and b) nice fast reads, with some bitter-sweetness but uplifting nonetheless. Even if I wasn't a super fan, I knew that reading an Ahern book was going to be an oasis between other more draining reads. Except for, like I said, The Book Of Tomorrow, which was the last one I read.
I've had this book in my shelf for about 6 or 7 years. I bought it soon after it came out and, for various reasons, I never got around to reading it. I was going through my pile of stuff and saw it and found out that the protagonist was a 29-year-old named Lucy whose life was kind of in a rut. I don't believe in fate, but I thought maybe it was better that I had left the book waiting for so long, for a time in which I personally connected with the protagonist. I felt that maybe this book was what I needed right now.
I was very wrong. All in all, Lucy is a character I should have somewhat connected with. I was, partly, the intended reader for this book (and I say 'partly' because it's pretty fatphobic at times, kind of culturally insensitive at others and overall entitled and classist in a lot of things, but I digress). And when a book is trying so hard to make readers feel empathy for a lead and when the lead has some similarities with the reader and it STILL doesn't succeed at it, it's obvious that something is wrong.
I understand all those who abandoned this out of frustration with the main character. I really do. But my main issue isn't that Lucy is annoying (which she is) or hard to bear (which she is). It's that she represents one of the biggest issues that I've been facing in introspective-driven literature in the last years: the dichotomy between writing a flawed character and writing an irredeemable jerk.
This story is, in its core, a coming of self story, if we want to call it something appropriate. It's meant to be Lucy's path towards "fixing" her life and dealing with her shortcomings. A good bunch of people in the edge of 30, like Lucy, know exactly what that's about, me included. But you can't feel empathy for a character whose mistakes and messes get sorted externally.
With this element of having her Life be an external character to her, a character with distinct personality, a separate life, portrayed like an entirely independent human being (and with which she has a weird sort of relationship, at times), whenever Life does things for Lucy (throws people her way, pushes her to do things, arranges meetings for her, intervenes for her to co-workers, talks to her boss, disses her ex-boyfriend, etc.) it isn't as if Lucy was doing it herself. In this narrative in which Life is his own self, nothing of what he does is Lucy's doing. She ultimately not only gets help for everything and doesn't find closure for most things, we also end up finding how, even if she insists on her responsibility for her mistakes, all of her issues are tied to things beyond her control.
So instead of feeling empathy we feel pity. That is the lazy writing move I'm so tired of. That instead of writing a flawed, complex character with a redemption arc, we get a jerk who has unfair things happen to them and we're supposed to feel pity, so we're meant to be on their side out of human nature rather than because we feel empathy towards them.
This would be a minor issue if Lucy's development and overall redemption was a minor part of the story, but the ENTIRE BOOK is based on the premise of Lucy "fixing her Life". Ultimately I feel like she did one tenth of the work she had to, that most things were done for her, and that all her "mistakes" were just things that unfairly happened to her and rooted on reasons beyond her control.
And, to top it all off, the book attempts to take a stance of "I don't need no man to feel complete", while it's basically all about just that. I know that in an Ahern book I'm supposed to expect a heterosexual romance at the core of it, but at least don't try to pass this as a book about female independence when every single thing in Lucy's life is tied to men. Her father, her brothers, her Life (who is a dude), her ex and her current love interest take more space and importance in her life than her female friends and her mother, who even though have an important part to play, don't directly determine Lucy's life and decisions as much as the men in her life do. Literally, her Life is a man.
On the one hand, I feel maybe I've ironically out-grown Ahern, even if now I'm in synch with the character's age as opposed to when I started reading her books. But on the other, I remember my favorite book of hers, If You Could See Me Now, which had a premise so much like this one and, to my memory, handled it SO much better, with a character actually changing her perspective on life, with her mistakes addressed, without a man at the end of the rainbow.
I wanted an uplifting book that I could feel empathy towards and I ended up pretty disappointed. At least, it was a fast read and not as bad as The Book Of Tomorrow.
I've been a passive-aggressive Ahern reader for about 10 years now. I've read a good bunch of her books when I was younger. I discovered her when I was in my late teens and I enjoyed her books because they were a) self-conclusive and b) nice fast reads, with some bitter-sweetness but uplifting nonetheless. Even if I wasn't a super fan, I knew that reading an Ahern book was going to be an oasis between other more draining reads. Except for, like I said, The Book Of Tomorrow, which was the last one I read.
I've had this book in my shelf for about 6 or 7 years. I bought it soon after it came out and, for various reasons, I never got around to reading it. I was going through my pile of stuff and saw it and found out that the protagonist was a 29-year-old named Lucy whose life was kind of in a rut. I don't believe in fate, but I thought maybe it was better that I had left the book waiting for so long, for a time in which I personally connected with the protagonist. I felt that maybe this book was what I needed right now.
I was very wrong. All in all, Lucy is a character I should have somewhat connected with. I was, partly, the intended reader for this book (and I say 'partly' because it's pretty fatphobic at times, kind of culturally insensitive at others and overall entitled and classist in a lot of things, but I digress). And when a book is trying so hard to make readers feel empathy for a lead and when the lead has some similarities with the reader and it STILL doesn't succeed at it, it's obvious that something is wrong.
I understand all those who abandoned this out of frustration with the main character. I really do. But my main issue isn't that Lucy is annoying (which she is) or hard to bear (which she is). It's that she represents one of the biggest issues that I've been facing in introspective-driven literature in the last years: the dichotomy between writing a flawed character and writing an irredeemable jerk.
This story is, in its core, a coming of self story, if we want to call it something appropriate. It's meant to be Lucy's path towards "fixing" her life and dealing with her shortcomings. A good bunch of people in the edge of 30, like Lucy, know exactly what that's about, me included. But you can't feel empathy for a character whose mistakes and messes get sorted externally.
With this element of having her Life be an external character to her, a character with distinct personality, a separate life, portrayed like an entirely independent human being (and with which she has a weird sort of relationship, at times), whenever Life does things for Lucy (throws people her way, pushes her to do things, arranges meetings for her, intervenes for her to co-workers, talks to her boss, disses her ex-boyfriend, etc.) it isn't as if Lucy was doing it herself. In this narrative in which Life is his own self, nothing of what he does is Lucy's doing. She ultimately not only gets help for everything and doesn't find closure for most things, we also end up finding how, even if she insists on her responsibility for her mistakes, all of her issues are tied to things beyond her control.
So instead of feeling empathy we feel pity. That is the lazy writing move I'm so tired of. That instead of writing a flawed, complex character with a redemption arc, we get a jerk who has unfair things happen to them and we're supposed to feel pity, so we're meant to be on their side out of human nature rather than because we feel empathy towards them.
This would be a minor issue if Lucy's development and overall redemption was a minor part of the story, but the ENTIRE BOOK is based on the premise of Lucy "fixing her Life". Ultimately I feel like she did one tenth of the work she had to, that most things were done for her, and that all her "mistakes" were just things that unfairly happened to her and rooted on reasons beyond her control.
And, to top it all off, the book attempts to take a stance of "I don't need no man to feel complete", while it's basically all about just that. I know that in an Ahern book I'm supposed to expect a heterosexual romance at the core of it, but at least don't try to pass this as a book about female independence when every single thing in Lucy's life is tied to men. Her father, her brothers, her Life (who is a dude), her ex and her current love interest take more space and importance in her life than her female friends and her mother, who even though have an important part to play, don't directly determine Lucy's life and decisions as much as the men in her life do. Literally, her Life is a man.
On the one hand, I feel maybe I've ironically out-grown Ahern, even if now I'm in synch with the character's age as opposed to when I started reading her books. But on the other, I remember my favorite book of hers, If You Could See Me Now, which had a premise so much like this one and, to my memory, handled it SO much better, with a character actually changing her perspective on life, with her mistakes addressed, without a man at the end of the rainbow.
I wanted an uplifting book that I could feel empathy towards and I ended up pretty disappointed. At least, it was a fast read and not as bad as The Book Of Tomorrow.
I'll admit, I judged this book by its cover. Not that it's a bad cover- just that books with this kind of title and accompanying cheesy stylized cover art are just fluff. But I'm happy to say that I am standing pleasantly corrected. 'The Time of My Life', penned by the same author as 'P.S. I Love You', is a sweet, hilarious, poignant and heartfelt novel about a girl named Lucy who has a appointment made for her with... her life. At first, the concept was pretty strange for me to read about (and strange for our heroine too), but as the story progresses, you grow to wish that this concept of literally meeting up with your life to sort things out was real. It's pretty brilliant actually. And it was great to read about Lucy and her life, and how paying attention and taking care of her life reaped tremendous rewards for her, even though the path was paved with mishaps, awkwardness and school of hard knocks lessons (to the delightful entertainment of the reader). This novel had such great life and character, and was surprisingly very relatable in situations both good and bad. Who knew one could be prompted to reflect on so many important moral questions from what appears to be a saccharine happy ending book? A great read all in all.
Once again, another great story by Cecelia Ahern. She has this way of keeping me drawn in even during the middle, where I usually find a lull in the story. This was so beautiful, and had me thinking about my own relationship with my life. I love how there was a sub-plot romance but it wasn't the main focus on the novel. This was still a romance novel, but one about falling in love with yourself and the life you're living. It reminded me of The Year I Met You, where the main character is finding themselves. I loved that book, and the moment I realized this one was similar, it was hard to put down whenever I found the time to pick it up.
This book was fun and an easy read, I enjoyed it for what it was. It made you think of the little things in life that you ignore. Always remember "every little truth is connected to a big lie." If you want fun and quick read I definitely recommend this book.
Meh, I used to love her stories but I think I'm growing out of them now. They just don't resonate with me like they used to :O)
There are just some books that get through you--and this is one of those, for me. I read it at a time when I was so confused, I didn't know what to do. Sometimes, it's like, we all want a piece of us to talk to us, tell us what's going on, what we should do. While it's a book filled with fantasy, the life lessons in here aren't to be missed.