Meeting the literal man of your dreams? Sign me up!
I knew I was going to like this book based solely on the premise. The question was, would the writing be brilliant enough that I’d LOVE it? Would it compare to some of my favorites, like Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Maybe In Another Life and Jill Santopolo’s The Light We Lost? You Were There Too bears enough resemblance to those two that I did stick with it, despite feeling let down in the first half.
As with its title, You Were There Too suffers from some clunky writing that, had it been elevated, could have been up there with the aforementioned comparisons. Take a second and compare “You Were There Too”, to “The Light We Lost”– both are simple strings of four words, but the latter has a certain poetry to it, which is present throughout Santopolo’s entire novel, lending it a literary quality. Dissimilarly , Oakley’s novel is just a bit coarse or unpolished. This book is high-concept, average-execution. But the main issue here is that the author wanted this to be a love triangle, where both of Mia’s love interests were equally compelling and worthy. Unfortunately, the draw of the story for me was the promise of the man of one’s dreams, which is compromised by the need to balance him with the protagonist’s husband.
All of that being said, Oakley’s novel is worth reading. It’s a good story, and, most of all, the end is shocking and completely unexpected. First, the person she chooses is NOT who I would’ve expected, though I respect her decision immensely and think it’s a great lesson for readers. We’re often so caught up in the romance of things that we forget the practicalities. It’s so easy to vilify people in real life who take the ‘grass is always greener’ approach, abandoning their tried-and-true spouses in favor of the newer, hotter, younger thing. Yet, in fiction, we often yearn for our female protagonists to seek freedom or red, hot, lust, or the perfect man (never mind the impossibility of such). Sure, it’s just escapist entertainment, letting our imaginations run wild. But amid a vast expanse of said escapism, it’s refreshing to read something real. (Like dreaming up a man and then meeting him, right? Haha). Maybe because the plot hinges on a pseduo-supernatural occurrence, Oakley decided to take an anti-Romance (capital R, as in the genre) cliche stance. She upends all expectations, and then, throws in a final twist worthy of a great thriller or mystery. Fans of the genre be damned, Colleen Oakley is coming for you, locked and loaded, with this ending.
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Sometimes Snarky 