2011 TBR Pile Challenge: 2 Down, 10 to Go!

So, on vacation last week, I read two of my TBR books. I suspect that this challenge might be more challenging than I expected at first. Turns out that I hadn't read these books because I suspected that they might not really be my cup of tea and, indeed, they weren't. So here goes with the reviews:

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

Author: Janelle Brown

First, a disclaimer: I didn't choose this book for myself. Well, obviously, I did: I chose this book for my TBR challenge because it's been sitting on my To Be Read shelf for over a year. However, initially, my sister gave me this book with the proviso that 'I had to read it, it is so funny.'

Well. In terms of plot, this book is the opposite of funny. The book focuses on the lives of three women: Janice, Margaret and Lizzie. The novel opens with Janice's husband's IPO going straight to heaven. The same day, he sends her a letter letting her know that he wants a divorce; turns out, he's been having an affair with her best friend. At the same time, her younger daughter, Lizzie, has made the false discovery that sleeping around gains her "popularity". Finally, Margaret, the older daughter, is on the verge of bankruptcy, having started a feminist media magazine that has failed spectacularly.

In terms of cliches, you've got them all: the pampered housewife in denial, the faltering feminist, the naive teenager. I had hopes approximately 100 pages into the book, as Janice begins using crystal meth, Margaret moves home and hides from her debts and Lizzie joins an evangelist church. Unfortunately, by the middle of the book, I suspected that the novel was based on the "idiot plot": many, if not all, of the problems faced by the characters could be solved if any of them behaved as real people do. It stretches credulity to imagine that a 28 year old cynic like Margaret wouldn't suspect that her mother is using drugs when she's awake nearly 24 hours a day and constantly active. Come to it, it strains credulity that even a pampered housewife like Janice would take crystal meth, no matter what the pool boy said about it.

And then there's Lizzie, whose conversion to Christianity takes place in one youth group meeting with a cool minister whose weapon of choice is a slideshow of "bad" people. Having been drinking and sleeping around, one doubts that Lizzie wouldn't take that with a grain of salt.

I stuck with it to the end, but partly because I was waiting to see what the resolution would be. If you're looking for a resolution, drop this book and find something else to read. The major conflict in the novel is the relationship of the three women with their husband and father. This conflict is never resolved. The combined efforts of the three humiliate him, but there is no payoff to this revenge: the book ends with a return phone call to the lawyer to happen in the future.

In short, it's chick-lit at its worst -- neither truly fluffy enough to be junk food for the brain, nor original enough to be fully engaging. Skip it.