Description:
When Chloe Adams' fianci dumps her-the night before their wedding-two girlfriends from her book group decide a little adventure is in order for the three of them. After all, why let a perfectly good honeymoon cruise go to waste?
Adventure? Chloe Adams? No way! Chloe's lived in one town her whole life. The closest she's ever gotten to actual adventures is reading about them. But her girlfriends won't take no for an answer.
One good adventure calls for another as Chloe's friends try to coax her out of her post-dumping funk, and soon she finds herself living out the adventures in her book club's latest selections. Hiking. Sailing. River rafting. Traveling to new places and eating exotic food. The play-it-safe Chloe begins to blossom into a new, daring Chloe. A Chloe who just might be ready to take on her biggest adventure of all.
My Review:
I love how Chloe's love of books comes through in the events of the story. Quotes from all kinds of books start out each chapter and correlate with the happenings of Chloe's life. In the opening pages of the book, Chloe is set to get married that day when she gets a text message from her husband-to-be calling off the wedding! Imagine getting dumped by text message! Bummer!
But instead of falling into a depression or letting bitterness get to her, Chloe turns over a new leaf in her life and, along with her reading club friends, starts experiencing all kinds of new adventures. The cool part is that they're picking adventures that go with the books they are reading: raft trips after reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, mystery theater after reading Agatha Christie, and the ultimate goal of saving for a trip to Paris after reading French Women Don't Get Fat.
The story takes an easy-going pace with lots of dialogue between the girlfriends and is light on actual action. If you like Paris, the final pieces of the story read a lot like a travel journal highlighting the experiences of the women on their trip. There is little conflict to resolve in the story--to be honest I felt a little like the potential issues for Chloe were almost glossed over without a real understanding of Chloe's struggle to get there. She quickly moves past the painful break-up with her almost-husband, her conflict with her "too perfect" sister just kind of dissolves, and her own anxieties are put to rest during her trip to Paris.
So I enjoyed the book for a nice summer entertaining read but was left wanting just a bit more action and less describing the action. (To illustrate, when Chloe's niece was born early with a health scare, the entire event was described after the fact, almost as an afterthought, whereas encounters with handsome men on the raft ride were described in detail.) All in all, I LOVE Laura Jensen Walker, but this one was not my favorite of hers.
