Sometimes you read a book and you’re not sure what went wrong or why you didn’t vibe with it. Other times you know EXACTLY what went wrong and it’s SO FRUSTRATING. Why why why didn’t the author just *not* do what they did, everything would be so good? Why can’t you use your time machine to go back and tell the author how to fix it?? whyyyy.
Anyway, this premise remains so tantalizing, which is why I picked up the book. Advika is a twenty-six year old aspiring screenwriter who is swept off her feet by the much older and much more powerful and famous Julian Zelding, Hollywood producer and Oscar winner (they meet at a post-Oscar’s part that Advika is bartending). After they are married, Julian’s first wife dies and leaves a clause in her will that Julian’s “latest child bride” can have $1M and a mysterious reel of film if she divorces him. This prompts Advika to rethink things and investigate Julian’s relationships with his three (really four) ex-wives.
But that’s not actually what the book is about, the way it plays out. That is the book the writer of the blurb created out of the actual book, which does not start the day the ex-wife dies. Ex-wife and her intriguing Will don’t come into play until 40%! First, you have to watch Advika “fall in love” with the douchebag that you know from the start won’t last (or you should know! because you read the blurb! i have seen people complain about the bad romance in this book and i just can’t, where is your brain?). Then you have to wait and wait and wait while he slowly controls her and manipulates and isolates her and it is AGONIZING and also boring at the same time.
I wish I could say that my feelings for the book changed when the ex-wife’s Will came into play, but they really didn’t. I was too frustrated with the book at that point, and its terribly linear and obvious and not even fun plotline. Come on, ex-wives whose talents are routinely suppressed by mediocre man who has failed and plagiarized upwards? That could have been so cathartic! Instead, this book is a drag, because Advika is a drag. And I’m not referring to her grief over the death of her twin sister, which was the only part of the book that really got me in my feels. Mostly, though, the way the book is structured makes it impossible for us to feel any sort of pleasurable feelings from the tension that is created by good stories. No tension here whatsoever.
So here’s how this book could have been great: Keep the first chapter—their meeting at the Oscars afterparty—as a prologue. That worked really well. Then skip to them having been married for more than two months or whatever ridiculous amount of time actually plays out here. Give it like six months maybe, or more—a year or so. Enough that their relationship has weight, and Advika’s emotional state is really in a rut. This makes the reader go in with certain assumptions about their relationship, and gives us stakes. It also avoids the problem of forcing us to watch them “fall in love.”
Then, as Advika is living her normal, stilted little trophy-wife life, the announcement of the ex-wife’s Will comes into play. Suddenly, Advika is defensive, and uncomfortable, and curious. And so are we as readers! Then we could have had the best bits of the all the stuff we skipped inserted in as full flashbacks as Advika is re-evaluating things and getting over her grief, and a lot of the stuff could just have been inserted as her recollections in the normal flow of the narrative. This would then have opened up some space for her to have some actual deep and important to the narrative and her character growth conversations with the other characters in the book, instead of being miserable and in her head all the time. I think that structure could really have also given some extra oomph to the ending, as Advika SPOILERS plans her escape END SPOILERS, which should have been a much bigger part of the story, because plots and machinations are FUN. (As it is in the story, we just get her telling us what she did after the fact, which was not satisfying.) And finally, SPOILERS the accidental pregnancy plotline END SPOILERS should have been introduced much earlier and been a part of Advika’s actual conflict, instead of being thrown in to the epilogue with just a clue or two hinting about it in the rest of the book. That would have given her urgency to leave Julian that much more importance.
So that is how this book should have gone, obviously, in my opinion. But I really think I’m right about this. And I’m sad that the author didn’t have an editor who told her that the way she was doing it was not the best way. Or even a good way.
I’m probably being more harsh on this book than it deserves. It’s readable, the characters are fine, it kept my interest. But it could have been great, and fun, and it wasn’t. Lost potential really gets to me, and usually the books that have it really clearly are the ones where I go off. As you can see above is the case. Anyway, you might like this despite my bloviating. But maybe also you would have liked my version better. I guess we’ll never know!
[2.5 stars, rounded down for frustration]