"Something Blue" by Emily Giffin

Read: 3/22/09

4/5 stars

I heard about Emily Giffin through a book club friend (thanks, Blooey!). Supposedly, Giffin writes a different kind of chick lit. Not having read a lot of chick lit really, aside from the Shopaholic books of Kinsella, and that awful-book-but-good-movie, The Devil Wears Prada, I don't really have much to compare with. Regardless, based on what I have read, Something Blue seems a more mature look into relationships in the chick-lit world.

Giffin's first book, Something Borrowed, actually introduces the readers to the same characters in Something Blue. Admittedly, I haven't read the first book yet. According to the background, Something Borrowed's protagonist, Darcy Rhones, is the first book's antagonist. Hence, Darcy begins as an annoying, self-obssessed character, much like Kinsella's Becky Bloomwood. Darcy's character change, however, begins when everything that she took for granted was taken away from her, and she ends up alone and pregnant, thus having to run off to a new country. In the span of a mere nine months, Darcy goes through three men, with a fourth permanent prospect, and transforms herself into the kind of woman she really wants to be.

Without initially sampling Becky Bloomwood, I might have been irretrievably annoyed with Darcy. However, the strong points of Giffin's character is that she's not as simpering as Kinsella's. Darcy has an awareness of herself and of the fact that she plays games. Given that her awareness isn't full, it still builds basis for the change that she works in herself later on. And this change is also built on the fact that, from start to finish, Darcy is portrayed as someone who is willing to do anything to achieve her goal. It's not such a far cry, then, to think that she'd apply the same sort of determination to refine her character.

Perhaps my only complaint with the book is that the time frame seems to have been too rushed. All the events had to fit within the span of nine months. So, it's a bit difficult for me to wrap my head around the idea that Darcy, in a manner of speaking, went through 3 lives within nine months. That's a lot of changing in a short amount of time. Not that I don't grant that people can change quickly if they so wanted. But it seemed that the timing was contrived to suit the purposes of the novel.

Ultimately, I thoroughly enjoyed my first exposure to Giffin. My fear now is that, because I read the second book first, I might not be as compassionate towards Rachel, the "good girl" best friend, because I've gotten to know Darcy better. And let's face it, bad girls are really more interesting.:)