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A review by frogy927
Meant to Be by Karen Stivali
1.0
This book is exactly as described. And I really should have read the description better before I jumped at the chance to get a review copy because unhappily married suburbanites are not my thing in the best of circumstances, and there's nothing in this book that sold them to me.
In fact, because I was so disinterested in the main couple, other things I might let slide in a book I was more engaged in, drove me up a wall in this one.
Early on in the book, Maryanne goes on and on about how she's not like other girls. There's no combination of interests and personality traits where that's anything but internalized misogyny. But it feels particularly insidious when Maryanne's main interests are drawing, baking and motherhood, which are all overwhelmingly female coded.
I have no idea how old the main characters are. They live in suburban NJ off the Path train, and Maryanne is the first of her friends to have kids. People in the NY area tend to have kids later than elsewhere in the country. The house is expensive and you have to work long enough to be able to afford it. Maybe Maryanne is 26 at the youngest?
I think the first good friend from my college class to have a kid was 29. Of course, I knew a handful of people a couple of years older or acquaintances who weren't in the NYC area who had kids before that. Maryanne really doesn't know any other woman who's had a kid that she can talk to about being pregnant? Daniel is the only one? Really? That's not sad and creepy at all.
Also, if we've just decided Maryanne is 26, she's had the internet since elementary school. It's weird and anachronistic that the first time she ever uses IM is to talk to Daniel because she can't be without him.
They played 'Never have I ever' wrong, and it was embarrassing.
Finally, Maryanne and Daniel don't do anything in the book. I kept waiting for them to grow up and deal with their problems, namely their marriages to other people. There were plenty of reasons to end those marriages: wanting different things, not being in love, rape, being cheated on by their spouse, sexual incompatibility, the list goes on and on. And yet they both plod along in these loveless, miserable marriages until a deus ex machina comes along and takes care of it for them. People don't have to earn their happiness in real life, but in a book, I want the characters to deserve the happy endings they get; I want to see them trying and struggling and desperately clawing their way there so I can cheer for them at the finish line.
In fact, because I was so disinterested in the main couple, other things I might let slide in a book I was more engaged in, drove me up a wall in this one.
Early on in the book, Maryanne goes on and on about how she's not like other girls. There's no combination of interests and personality traits where that's anything but internalized misogyny. But it feels particularly insidious when Maryanne's main interests are drawing, baking and motherhood, which are all overwhelmingly female coded.
I have no idea how old the main characters are. They live in suburban NJ off the Path train, and Maryanne is the first of her friends to have kids. People in the NY area tend to have kids later than elsewhere in the country. The house is expensive and you have to work long enough to be able to afford it. Maybe Maryanne is 26 at the youngest?
I think the first good friend from my college class to have a kid was 29. Of course, I knew a handful of people a couple of years older or acquaintances who weren't in the NYC area who had kids before that. Maryanne really doesn't know any other woman who's had a kid that she can talk to about being pregnant? Daniel is the only one? Really? That's not sad and creepy at all.
Also, if we've just decided Maryanne is 26, she's had the internet since elementary school. It's weird and anachronistic that the first time she ever uses IM is to talk to Daniel because she can't be without him.
They played 'Never have I ever' wrong, and it was embarrassing.
Finally, Maryanne and Daniel don't do anything in the book. I kept waiting for them to grow up and deal with their problems, namely their marriages to other people. There were plenty of reasons to end those marriages: wanting different things, not being in love, rape, being cheated on by their spouse, sexual incompatibility, the list goes on and on. And yet they both plod along in these loveless, miserable marriages until a deus ex machina comes along and takes care of it for them. People don't have to earn their happiness in real life, but in a book, I want the characters to deserve the happy endings they get; I want to see them trying and struggling and desperately clawing their way there so I can cheer for them at the finish line.