It was more than not being my genre, there were some major eyebrow-raising plot points, yet again, a superfluous romance, and it was almost a glorification of teen pregnancy.
Up Front Disclaimer: I have a long and storied history with teen pregnancies and deadbeat dads that probably colored my vision spectacularly, so please - take my issues with a grain of salt. I'm probably too wedded to reality to have any objective opinion here.
Before I get to my gripes, I do want to say what I liked about the book:
Allie's got some good writing chops, and she has a flowery kind of prose that works more than it doesn't (a couple attempted lines in the first chapter fall flat, but she hits her stride after that). Knowing where this story came from (thanks Monday and Wednesday blog posts!) makes this just a lot more heartrending, and ugh. You feel it. Ow. I wanna hug my mom.
I was actually quite stunned that Momma died in the first chapter in a car crash. Reading the book description, readers get the impression that it's a story about Clare, not about Gabby and her father. But the plot itself is about Gabby, 18, who finds herself and her younger sisters motherless after aforementioned car crash. Complicating matters is the girls' father, who impregnated Momma at 16, but was not allowed to marry her, cause #RichPeopleProblems. Still, he kept showing up every 2 or 3 years and because apparently Clare's never heard of birth control, she kept getting knocked up resulting in Gabby's two younger sisters. But Dad has his "Real Family" with a wife and a few "Real Kids," and other than cheating on his wife every few years, he doesn't seem that eager to be in his fake family's life.
When mom dies, Dad decides that instead of Gabby giving up her dreams to go to Brown University and raise two kids (much as her own mother did by deciding to have Gabby at 16), she should leave the two youngers with him and his wife and kids and go off to get an Ivy League Education.
But of course, Gabby decides to be a
And then, things got a bit WTF-ey.
The Lawyer-Friend who is helping with the custody case says, "Hey, if you want custody of your siblings, you should get married. How about to your best friend who you suddenly have feelings for 2 days after your mom's death? Like, we could do an arranged marriage. What do you think about that?"
Not only that, but she wants to do the thing.
SHE WANTS TO DO THE THING, YOU GUYS.
For a moment, then she comes to her senses. But she still decides to date the guy. WHAT?
It was at that point that I put down the iPad and walked away for a minute.
I suppose it could have been kind of romantic, but you guys know my stance on romance. The whole thing between Gabby and Jason (her best/boyfriend) was way too blargh for me. I just thought it felt out of place and didn't add anything to the story but a couple of Liz Lemon Eye Rolls.
One of the bigger WTF moments I had - again, this is where my own Teen Mom Bias comes into play - was that it seemed even dear old Dead Mom wanted Gabby to be with Jason. You see, Mom decided every summer to write letters to her three kids - you know, just in case she died.
These letters could have been so sweet, but they just seemed like a hugely stretched plot point. What *healthy* 33 year old thinks about death so much that she would write not one - but upwards of 10 letters for her three daughters, on the off-chance that she died? One for every occasion - first date, wedding day, when you're low, graduating college, first day of college. Not only that, but she apparently updated them every year! If she'd just written one all-encompassing letter, it would have been more believable. Or maybe if she was terminal, but the car crash was a sudden thing. Anyway, I digress.
In one of these letters - the first one, actually, the mom says, "Be sure to lean on your best friend Jason." I'm sorry, but every teen mom that I know specifically - explicitly - is VERY leery about their daughters repeating the same mistakes as they did. Clare telling Gabby to lean on her boy best friend was way too unbelievable for me. Then again, Clare didn't seem to mind being a teenage mother, so perhaps she didn't think it was such a bad thing after all. She did get a few million dollars and she's a successful talent agent. Because that totally happens in the real world, yo.
Perhaps this is my own bias coming through, as I've got my fair share of teen pregnancy in my family. I love every single child born out of wedlock (smushes), but at the same time - when you are sixteen years old, dropped out of high school with an infant, you do not suddenly become a successful talent agent in 18 years. ESPECIALLY if you don't have a support network of grandparents, aunts and uncles,
Bottom line: Don't get pregnant at 16, kids. /Rant
Happily, there was a much better executed back half that focused on the tense relationship between Dad and Daughter. Y'all know me and my father-daughter feels. And for a brief moment, when Gabby wasn't screwing around with her new boyfriend in the middle of dealing with a custody crisis, I was totally and completely suckered in.
However, the more I learned about Dad Austin - especially in the end - the more I kind of began to hate him, just as we were supposed to see that he's not a shithead after all. The reason for him abandoning his children thrice? His parents did not approve of the marriage to some penniless teenager, and if he married her, they'd cut him off. But, if he just "left them alone" and married someone else, his hoity-toity parents (who we never saw to give their own account of this) would give Clare and her daughter(s) all the money in the world. Oh, and if he didn't have kids with the other woman, he was gonna get cut off too.
So instead of being a man, getting a fucking job at McDonald's like all the rest of the teenaged fathers, and taking care of the problem that he made in the first place, he decided to just write a check. Or his parents did.
The discovery that the parents were the reason why Gabby, Gemma, and Guiliana don't have a father was supposedly the "A-ha" moment. Austin really loved her mother all along, and he was "finally going to leave his wife and other kids" to be with Clare and the girls.
This is really where the end of the book fell apart for me. First of all, who the hell roots for a man to break up a family?! Those other kids, HIS KIDS, they're going to suffer, too, let me tell you, and while he may not love his wife, she's a freaking human being. But you know what - at least his "real" family has a memory of him in their lives. His other kids don't even know him, and his excuse is that his parents were going to cut him off from millions of dollars?
I was actually on his side the entire book - sure, you've been a cheating dirtbag, but now that your mistress/baby mama is dead, you're going to take responsibility for your kids and let your eldest go have her dreams. But I understood where Gabby was coming from too - he is a spineless dirtbag and he needed to WORK to demonstrate that he was going to change from now on.
Nothing about the realization made him any less of a dirtbag, and yet Gabby acts as though it is The Thing That Changes Her Mind.
The entire book, all I saw Austin do was Talk and Throw Money. Deadbeat dads, in my experience, do a lot of talking and not a lot of doing. For all Gabby was worried about him leaving the kids high and dry, she seemed placated by the simple fact that he said he really loved her. Besides offering to take the kids and pay for Gabby's school, he didn't actually do anything that was worthy of her forgiving him. Except to say, "I'm sorry I'm a douche" fifteen thousand times.
For a guy who has a proven track record of shirking when the pressure hits, I wouldn't take his word for it, and I was disappointed that Gabby did.
But Gabby forgives him at face value and goes to Brown, and the kids go to live with Dear Old Asshat Dad, and everyone is happy.
---
I think if you can suspend belief that the world is a lot less shitty than it actually is, is a really good escape kind of book. I know Walker was trying to hit all of the feels - and for a lot of people who aren't crotchety old women such as myself with massive hang-ups, I am sure that they will land superbly.
Unfortunately, this is my review and my hang-ups were too much. So three stars is all I can give.
Buy On My Way Home for Kindle
No comments:
Post a Comment