I Take You
By Eliza Kennedy
Lily Wilder is the image of a young, beautiful, successful
New York Lawyer, gallivanting through cases, and men, including her senior
partner, with such energy and verve that her approach to work, alcohol and men
is the norm. It is only when she decides
to marry handsome archeologist Will that the assumption is brought into
question. Can she really settle down,
and limit herself to one man?
The questions are explored as Lily spends the week before
her wedding with family and friends. Her
bridesmaids and her unconventional collection of mother/stepmothers/grandmother
try to convince Lily that she should call off the wedding, each for her own
reasons. Lily’s father, who has married
each of the three powerful women, and divorced them as one casts off last
season’s coat, complicates Lily’s decisions by giving her a glimpse of where
her appetites originated, and what the future may hold for her.
The quest to discover if she should or should not marry Will
plays in counterpoint to Lily’s work on a high profile case for her law firm,
for which she is unqualified and poorly prepared. The reader will continue to turn the pages to
see if Lily implodes both personally and professionally, or if by some miracle,
everything will indeed work out.
The book is well written, especially the characters, and is
sprinkled both with humorous situations and clever turns of phrase. Lily’s grandmother is delightful and one of
the only seemingly honest characters in the book. It falls down a bit on emotional depth… Lily
is so flighty it is hard to take her seriously when she asks the big question:
should she marry Will. It could have
delved deeper into the issue of sexual expectations for both genders; instead,
Will lectures Lily, and thus the reader, on historical and sociological
implications. At this point, I just want
these characters to feel something…even if it is heartbreak. Perhaps it is the one week timeline that the
book limits itself to, but everything feels as though it happens too fast. The way Lily’s life is portrayed gives the
same impression, and you just want to tell her to slow down.
A great beach read, but don’t expect to ponder it long!
More info about I Take You at lilywilder.com.
I received this book from Blogging for Books for this
review.
