Book 40/30.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I started the year saying “I Do” on January 4th and so it felt right to end my 2024 reading challenge with this early Taylor Jenkins Reid read about what happens After I Do.
After I Do is the story of a couple caught up in an old game—and searching for a new road to happily ever after. When Lauren and Ryan’s marriage reaches the breaking point, they come up with an unconventional plan. They decide to take a year off in the hopes of finding a way to fall in love again. One year apart, and only one rule: they cannot contact each other. Aside from that, anything goes.
Lauren embarks on a journey of self-discovery, quickly finding that her friends and family have their own ideas about the meaning of marriage. These influences, as well as her own healing process and the challenges of living apart from Ryan, begin to change Lauren’s ideas about monogamy and marriage. She starts to question: When you can have romance without loyalty and commitment without marriage, when love and lust are no longer tied together, what do you value? What are you willing to fight for?
This was my sixth TJR read and the first I have ever rated less than 4 stars. It was not a bad book, and in another author this would have been one of their better books. But it gets 3 stars from me as it does not reach the dazzling heights everything I have read since The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo has. Because if there is an author who improves her craft with every book it is TJR, so this read like an early-in-her-career novel. That said, the characters were rich and felt real, the storyline was interesting, I liked the plot and pacing, and I definitely learned a thing or two about marriage from this love story about what happens when the love fades. About staying in love, seizing love, forsaking love, and committing to love with everything you’ve got.
** A guide to ratings **
1 star – did not like it
2 stars – it was okay
3 stars – liked it
4 stars – really liked it
5 stars – it was amazing
Lwile the Leo 