Jennie's B(ook)log

Title: Love Walked In
Author: Marisa de los Santos
Published: 2006, Dutton
Category: General Fiction
Rating: 6/10

I had a hard time deciding on a rating for this one because there were some things about this book that I really loved, and a lot I didn't like at all. (Rating books is not as easy as I thought it would be.)

Love Walked In starts off with two parallel storylines--one of a woman named Cornelia as she meets a man who she thinks is the man of her dreams. He looks and acts like Cary Grant, he's dreamy and oh-so-fabulous. The other storyline is about Clare, an eleven-year-old girl who has been watching her mother have a mental breakdown for several months. Her story is heartbreaking--she tries so hard to keep their lives together even though she's so scared. I don't want to give away too much more about the plot because it was so unusual and surprising that it's definitely one of the best things about the book.

I had a love/hate relationship with the writing style of the book. The author is a poet and you can totally tell--about every other sentence has a metaphor in it. And they are beautiful metaphors and sometimes she writes something that is just so true and lovely. But after a while, I was like, come on, let's move along here. Description is good, but I felt it got a little bogged down in places with it.

Another reason I didn't love this book was that I couldn't really like the characters. They were just all a little too beautiful, clever, and rich for me. And Cornelia weights 85 pounds, which is really not a way to endear her to the average woman.

But all those problems aside, I did enjoy it. It is a sweet story of love in all its forms--romantic, friendship, familial. I was afraid I wouldn't be happy with the ending, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Apparently it's already slated to become a movie with Sarah Jessica Parker playing Cornelia, which could be really good.