Take a photo of a barcode or cover
finesilkflower 's review for:
Shopaholic Ties the Knot
by Sophie Kinsella
Jane Espenson, writer for Buffy and Firefly, wrote a blog post about the first spec script she ever wrote as a pre-teen. It was for M*A*S*H and the whole episode was just Charles trying to decide whether to marry a girl he'd gotten engaged to. First he made one choice, then the other. Jane called the episode "The Seesaw," and in her post, she warns against mistaking alternation for advancing the plot.
That's this book. It's just a seesaw. Becky has to decide whether to accept her parents' offer to throw them a wedding or Luke's birth mother's. First she makes one choice, then another. Ad nauseam. I can't get invested in this decision. Nor can I continue to be particularly interested in Becky, who is not, despite her friends' assurances, a plucky good-hearted optimist. She continually proves herself to be a weak-willed, short-sighted coward with a very shallow understanding of other human beings.
Look, you know what you're getting into with a Shopaholic book by now, and it's not like I had towering hopes for this one, but I had a basic expectations based on the premise. Wedding drama seems like a natural progression for this series, what with the real-life pitfalls of overspending on a wedding that so many folks fall into. You come to the Shopaholic books for money drama, at least I do, but there's barely any money stuff here. There's decadence, but no budgeting choices, since both of Becky and Luke's wedding options are all-expenses-paid. Don't come to this book looking for something that you, as a person who may have planned their own wedding, can relate to.
Don't come to it for romance, either. Luke and Becky's relationship is not central to the plot. At all. It's literally just wedding stuff. Luke might as well not be there. Which is fine, since he's basically a non-character, but it seems thematically inappropriate in a wedding book, doesn't it? This is the book where Becky should be learning to operate together with Luke as a team, especially financially, but despite a few comical references to their joint account, none of that happens. In fact, their communication is worse than ever and just gets worse and worse as the book progresses. Becky not only manages to hide from him all of her problems and concerns, including the most basic rough-outlines facts about their wedding, she actually ends up unilaterally making a number of decisions that profoundly affect his life, and either not telling him at all or telling him only after it's all decided, as a surprise. When she's not hiding things from him out of childlike fear of the scary father-figure, she's hiding things from him out of protective nuturing for the vulnerable child-figure. At no time is Luke an equal or even very much of a presence in the book. This should be the most romantic installment in the series, but it's the least.
+1 star because I still like Suze.
That's this book. It's just a seesaw. Becky has to decide whether to accept her parents' offer to throw them a wedding or Luke's birth mother's. First she makes one choice, then another. Ad nauseam. I can't get invested in this decision. Nor can I continue to be particularly interested in Becky, who is not, despite her friends' assurances, a plucky good-hearted optimist. She continually proves herself to be a weak-willed, short-sighted coward with a very shallow understanding of other human beings.
Look, you know what you're getting into with a Shopaholic book by now, and it's not like I had towering hopes for this one, but I had a basic expectations based on the premise. Wedding drama seems like a natural progression for this series, what with the real-life pitfalls of overspending on a wedding that so many folks fall into. You come to the Shopaholic books for money drama, at least I do, but there's barely any money stuff here. There's decadence, but no budgeting choices, since both of Becky and Luke's wedding options are all-expenses-paid. Don't come to this book looking for something that you, as a person who may have planned their own wedding, can relate to.
Don't come to it for romance, either. Luke and Becky's relationship is not central to the plot. At all. It's literally just wedding stuff. Luke might as well not be there. Which is fine, since he's basically a non-character, but it seems thematically inappropriate in a wedding book, doesn't it? This is the book where Becky should be learning to operate together with Luke as a team, especially financially, but despite a few comical references to their joint account, none of that happens. In fact, their communication is worse than ever and just gets worse and worse as the book progresses. Becky not only manages to hide from him all of her problems and concerns, including the most basic rough-outlines facts about their wedding, she actually ends up unilaterally making a number of decisions that profoundly affect his life, and either not telling him at all or telling him only after it's all decided, as a surprise. When she's not hiding things from him out of childlike fear of the scary father-figure, she's hiding things from him out of protective nuturing for the vulnerable child-figure. At no time is Luke an equal or even very much of a presence in the book. This should be the most romantic installment in the series, but it's the least.
+1 star because I still like Suze.