SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING

Author: Kyra Davis ISBN: 077832351X 11/2006 CHICK LIT Publisher: MIRA

If I really press myself, I can remember. The warning signs were there. No neon signs, mind you, just little sparks at the end of a very long string. Funny that I could have been blind enough not to realize that the string was a lighted fuse. When her boyfriend of three months, Tad Showers, proposes, twenty-six-year-old April thinks that everything in her life is finally falling into place. Between her flaky, tree hugging mother and her she-devil boss, marriage seems like the place she'll find love and security. Tad's exactly the kind of man April wants: smart, ambitious and wildly romantic. But soon after they're married, the honeymoon ends. Tad's crazy, extravagant gestures are starting to look less romantic and more... well, just plain crazy. Is it normal for her husband to never mention his family, rack up secret credit card debt and get less sleep than your average insomniac? Are you still supposed to stand by your man, even if it turns out he isn't who you thought he was? When she promised "for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health," this isn't what she pictured. But sometimes you don't get the life you imagined. And sometimes you have to figure out how to write your own happy ending.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING is an intense non-stop read which is nearly impossible to put down. The novel has all the ingredients of chick lit—great clothes, lots of alcohol, bad boyfriends, good friends—but it is chick lit taken to the next level. This is not light and fluffy.

April Silverperson is twenty-six and settling instead of living her dreams. You can't blame her, since her career at a high-end department store is going well. Who wants to leave that and try for a Ph.D.? She meets Tad Showers, who seems to be the man of her dreams, except for troubling little things like claiming his family is extremely racist and wouldn't approve of her since she's half Jewish and half black, so she can't ever meet them. He is controlling in a semi-good way and isolating in a semi-good way, and if you knew the signs you might realize he has problems, but that mostly he's intense, and they have an expensive wedding only six months after meeting.

A life like theirs is bound to unravel and that is the majority of the book—the unraveling. The sad thing is that the victim's life has to be destroyed as much as the mentally ill person sometimes and you have to hit bottom to escape.

SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING is totally engrossing and a major cautionary tale. I highly recommend it.

Heather Hiestand