Review: Brilliant
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 9, 2010
April Taylor tries to eat her way out of depression for months after the failure of her marriage. Luis O'Neill is emotionally unavailable to women and overcompensates in his job to make up for his upbringing in the projects. Eventually April and Luis meet.Yes, this is a romance story about a woman and a man who find each other. But it isn't your typical romance. Author Consuelo Saah Baehr doesn't analyze her characters or let them analyze themselves. Instead, she takes readers deep into these people's lives, shows what has shaped them, what is happening to them now, makes us care about them, and then lets readers do their own analysis. In the poignant scene where Luis asks April about her divorce, and she thinks she reads on his face that Luis will decide she's not desirable because another man dumped her, I found myself thinking, "Don't hurt her. She was so beat up emotionally by the failure of her marriage. Please, Luis, be nice." It was then that I saw how truly clever this author was in getting me to understand these characters and root for them without beating me over the head with an info dump.The characters are completely fleshed out and, flaws and all, I loved them. The setting--New York and Newark world of advertising--was interesting and the details rang true. Ms. Baehr's dry wit added an extra dimension of humor to the writing, which was superb.I thought the ending was too quick, but otherwise I really loved this book and will read more from this author. Highly recommended.