Play Book Tag discussion

Love Walked In – Marisa de los Santos
3.5***

Cornelia, the “under-achiever” in her family, is the manager of a café. One day a Cary-Grant-look-alike walks in and her life changes.

This is a chick-lit, romance novel with great heart. The novel is told in alternating points of view: Cornelia, and Clare, an eleven-year-old with a chaotic home life. I loved them both, though I was somewhat incredulous at several plot points.

Clare is a wonderful child character – smart, observant, brave and caring, she is also frightened and fragile. Several of her chapters just about broke my heart. Cornelia is likewise smart, independent, caring and compassionate, if occasionally blind to reality. She does tend to rely too heavily on old movies to explain her life, or on which to pin her hopes for love. I’m reminded a little of the movie Sleepless in Seattle, where Meg Ryan’s character obsessively watched the Cary Grant / Deborah Kerr movie An Affair to Remember. (Note: several reviews have criticized the book for the references to these romantic movies of the ‘40s and ‘50s, because the reviewers had no experience with them, so didn’t understand the references. Not the case for me, however.)

De los Santos was known for her poetry before she published this novel. Her skill at poetic writing shows here. I loved some of her metaphors and descriptions. For example:
Getting the words right matters, but so did describing his voice when he talked and capturing the feeling that filled her as he spoke and after he spoke. She thought about the word “capture,” how it put a writer on par with a fur trapper or big-game hunter, and how it implied that stories were whole and roaming around loose in the world, and a writer’s job was to catch them.

The men in the story didn’t get as much attention as I might have liked, and they were not very well developed. The ending is also a little too convenient, but it’s a chick-lit romance, so I cut her some slack. It’s a solid summer-at-the-beach read.

There is a sequel: Belong to Me which continues Cornelia’s story. I’d read it previously, not realizing that this novel comes first. I don’t think it affected my enjoyment of either book, but readers should probably read them in order.


LINK to my review

I have this on my high notes list. I'm a little afraid to read it with chick lit being mentioned. Not my favourite genre!

Susie wrote: "I have this on my high notes list. I'm a little afraid to read it with chick lit being mentioned. Not my favourite genre!"

I didn't think this was chick lit.

I wonder if there's a category in between Chick lit and higher brow fiction. It's been a very long time since I read this one although I remember that I loved it. I think it's a high note for like 2008. I wonder if there could be a category for good Chick lit. Like maybe it would be lower brow for some of our beautifully loved reads, but higher brow for the genre. If I'm recalling correctly this book would go there.

I wouldn't classify this book as chick-lit, to me it's more contemporary romance or contemporary fiction. When I think of Chick lit i think more along the lines of Sophie Kinsella, Jane Green, Emily Giffin, Helen Fielding. I think de los Santos is a much better writer - as you mentioned she can be very poetic. And I think the book itself wasn't very predictable. I've read all her books and I really enjoy them.

I have nothing against chick-lit; I just read Kinsella's latest book and I enjoyed it for what it is - a light, breezy book perfect for a day at the beach or by the pool.