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I Take You by Eliza Kennedy (view source)
Revision as of 13:09, 14 September 2020
, 13:09, 14 September 2020no edit summary
{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=I Take You
|author=Eliza Kennedy
|reviewer= Zoe PageMorris
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary= A very frank account of a young lawyer in New York, this is an easy but at times irritating read which will be a bit too explicit for some
|date=May 2016
|isbn= 978-0099593669
|website=|videocover= 0099593661|amazonukaznuk=<amazonuk>0099593661</amazonuk>|amazonusaznus=<amazonus>0099593661</amazonus>
}}
In a week from now, Lily and Will are getting married! This weekend, they'll be leaving New York and jetting down to Florida to spend the week with her family, preparing for the big day, and it's all brilliantly exciting. They're quite the golden couple, her a lawyer at a big firm, him an archaeologist at a top museum, young, attractive, they bring the world to its knees. And then sometimes Lily gets on her knees, but, ooops, it's just as likely to be in front of her boss or a random from the bar as it is her fiancé. Lily, you see, is not exactly the monotonous, monogamous type. Instead she likes to sleep around, drink, take drugs and breakdown in tears, all while keeping this a secret from the man she's supposed to love and while holding down a substantial professional job of course.
With quotes hyping it as the [[''Bridget Jones]] '' of our time, or calling it ''Funny, smart and controversial'' I was expecting to love this book, but instead I found it crass and crude, and a little unnecessary. The story is a little confusing, mixing a case Lily is handling (conveniently located in Florida, conveniently timed so it's the week she's down there) with her on again off again thoughts of love for Will. It's hard to believe they ever got to the point of being a week away from a wedding, because Lily is hardly the marrying kind. She's also not really the sort to bow to societal pressure, so it's a little hard to grasp.
There are some great moments in the book, but not enough to carry a whole plot, and I thought it over-laboured a common theme throughout the story, which was the disparity between men and women when it comes to casual sex. I'm not sure the disparity she feels still exists to this extent, but instead would suggest that sleeping with multiple colleagues, strangers and members of the wedding party in the 7 days prior to your wedding is what will get you judged, and possibly rightly so.
This story is easy to read but hard to believe, and after a while , it became annoying as I forced myself to get to the end and see what happens with the wedding. Needless to say , I got very few tips for my upcoming nuptials as wedding planning features only in passing and instead we find ourselves cringing in the corner as Lily meets her in -laws for the first time, or grimacing as she vomits violently, and repeatedly.
I wanted to like this book but in the end much like Lily and various members of her friends and family, past and present, we didn't get on. It's modern and it's 'outrageous' but I also found it quite offensive, and I can't remember ever saying that about a book before.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending us a copy to review. For a less extreme view of New York (at least in terms of the language and sexual misadventures), we loved [[Techbitch by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza]]. You might get more pleasure from [[The Tenth Case by Joseph Teller]].
{{amazontext|amazon=0099593661}}