Monday, March 7, 2011

You Don't Love This Man

This book was fascinating in a strange way... but before I get into MY review, let's read a little synopsis about the book itself:

You'd Don't Love This Man by Dan DeWeese
On the morning of his daughter Miranda's wedding, Paul learns that the bank he manages has been robbed- apparently by the same man who robbed it twenty-five years before. As if that weren't enough, Miranda, who is set to marry Paul's former best friend- a man twice her age-seems to have gone missing.

Struggling to reconcile his little girl with the grown woman he's about to walk down the aisle (if he can find her), to accept his onetime peer as his future son-in-law, and to comprehend the strange coincidence of being robbed by the same man two decades apart, Paul takes stock of everything leading up to this moment- as he attempts to navigate the day's many surprises while questioning the motives and choices of those around him.

I will say before I talk about this book that it is written beautifully well. If we're being honest, I sometimes struggle with male authors because I have a hard time really believing the characters they create and the motion of events they go through; sometimes they seem a bit forced and leave you feeling like, "Yeah right- that would never happen." Dan DeWeese did such a good job capturing Paul, creating him into a character you felt sorry for but at the same time were frustrated with. And then I felt like, if I were a divorced father, that I could really relate to him.

The struggles of co-parenting with his ex-wife, Sandra, and him realizing maybe things weren't really the way they were. The story is all centered around Miranda's wedding but at the same time you journey into his past as a young man starting a career, which snowballs into meeting the best friend, getting robbed, getting married, having a child, getting divorced, and then really coming full circle with best friend marrying his daughter. I mean, you think, "Could that really happen?", but then it does all the time really.

I really enjoyed how the story alternated between the present day of Paul trying to find his daughter on her wedding day-- because she's MIA, and him trying to reconcile his feelings towards it all with events from the past. So it's like all in one day he's trying to figure out how he got to this place and where does he go from there. Such an interesting perspective and you sometimes forget that it's all happening on one day-- which I love. I will say the end was pretty good- and I could feel really what Paul felt when he was with Miranda at the end- so that right there tells you the author did a great job really capturing their relationship.

I highly recommend this book because it kind of makes you think. It makes you look at these quiet, mild mannered people around you and really wonder what it is they hold up inside them? Do they ever feel like everything is happening around and without them? And what happens when that person just says enough is enough and takes it into their own hands?

If you are interested in reading other reviews of this book, go HERE, and if you'd like to learn more about the author, please check out his website.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Getting a peek inside someone's head (a real person or a literary character) can really make you see other people in a new way, that's for sure!

I'm glad you enjoyed this one. Thanks for being on the tour.