You Were There Too by Colleen Oakley and The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo

4 Stars

2 Stars

^^^^tearjerker survival kit – copious amounts of snacks, Kleenex, tea (to drink and save the bags to put on your puffy eyeholes), warm fuzzy cuddly thing, etc.

In yet another display of how much I channel my inner Cartman on the regular and do what I want, let’s get real unconventional and “review” two books at once. I read these about a week or so apart. They have similar covers, they both have the modus operandi of destroying the reader via emotional manipulation, they both deal with a cheating aspect of sorts, both had female leads who were more than a bit self-centered. However, I loooooooooved You Were There Too and did not enjoy The Light We Lost much at all.

The Light We Lost was my mother-in-law’s book club book last month. They pick all sorts of stuff – sometimes I have read them, sometimes I have no desire to ever read them, sometimes I go ahead and get them from the library as was the case here. I didn’t know anything before beginning aside from the fact that it was a romance and I thought that was a pretty odd choice for a book club selection and that it begins with two people meeting in NYC on September 11th and then follows their story for 13 years. I have no idea if the ending was supposed to be a shocker, but I knew immediately upon starting what the “big reveal” was going to be to due the style of delivery used by Jill Santopolos. I also wanted to punch the narrator Lucy right in the babymaker and that never makes for a good time. I appreciated 9/11 simply being used as a jumping off point that brought two strangers together rather than some horrible manipulation at the end, but sadly there was plenty of attempted manipulation still to be had.

The flipside was You Were There Too. I received an advanced copy of it basically because I am a greedy whore who wants all the free things. I then completely missed the release date and forgot I even had it until people started posting pictures on Instagram and I saw it staring at me from across the room on my “shelf of shame.” As I said above, Mia was more than a bit focused on numero uno as well, and yet somehow I didn’t want to physically harm her like I did poor Lucy. I actually didn’t foresee all the reveals of this one – even the ending that could easily be predicted by most snuck up on me because I was so invested in the story. The “I’ve met you in my dreams” is what I call tropey yum-yum so this had that going for it as well. And most of all, it made me have the feelz. In order to maintain my street cred, Imma go ahead and blame that one on . . . .



Many thanks to Berkley for the advanced copy in exchange for my review and my homies at the library for always hooking me up with everything else I want to read.