The Book Tea

By the end of it all I just assumed no one ever told the truth, and that was when I started lying too.

I have been stuck in a reading rut for a little over a month now. I wanted to read but couldn’t tell what I was in the mood for and none of the books on my shelves appealed to me. Finally, a walk around a book store and picking up a book with a cute cover brought me back to reading. Luckiest Girl Alive caught my eye. The cover said it is soon to be a movie from Reese Witherspoon and I love me some Reese. This book is a good fit for a reading rut because it isn’t a difficult read. I got through it pretty quickly and it’s set in New York. For some reason I love books and shows set in NYC, even though I have never visited.

Luckiest Girl Alive tells the story of TifAni FaNelli (weird name I know). She is a woman living in New York who works as an editor at The Women’s Magazine, a thinly veiled version of Cosmo. She will soon marry a rich, handsome blue blood. Although she seems to have it all, Ani has a tragic past involving her attendance at the private Bradley School more than a decade before. Her past threatens to ruin her carefully crafted perfect life. The book explores those secrets she tries to hide.

I liked this book. It isn’t the best book I’ve read by any means but it has a generally good pace and a few good plot points that kept me interested. But, the characters fell a little flat. While there is a bit of a twist I expected something bigger and more shocking toward the end. Instead the book just ended, leaving me wanting. Ani is not a likable character, in fact she is a rather superficial mean girl. This doesn’t bother me as much as it does others. Honestly, we don’t get enough viewpoints from characters that aren’t likable. The problem with Ani is that she has legitimate reasons for being the way she is. But the author tends to gloss over some of her deeply ingrained insecurities. This leaves us with a surface view of Ani as a person. This is bothersome because the book is from Ani’s perspective. Even if the other characters don’t get to see her real inner turmoil, the reader should. There were glimmers of deeper characterization but the writing never quite got there.

Despite some flaws, the writing is decent. The events are tragic and I didn’t see them coming right away, although the hints spread throughout the book come off as a bit too deliberate. This is a good summer read for when you want to read but aren’t in the mood for difficult dialogue or complex characters. The addition of an essay written by the author about her real life experience, which informed a heavy event in the book, moved me more than the entire book that preceded it. Originally published in Lenny Letter, I recommend giving the essay What I Know by Jessica Knoll a read even if you don’t pick up her book. Luckiest Girl Alive is a good simple read as long as you don’t expect too much from it.