Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin

I must be crazy.  I joined a second book club with my fellow September 2008 brides when I barely have time to finish the one book a month I've commited to in my other online book club with my fellow March 2010 mommies.  This month I actually pulled it off and read two books in a month.  Incredible.  Of course it involved a few late nights and a rainy weekend of reading every chance I got, but I did it and thoroughly enjoyed it.  The first book I'll review this month was your classic chic lit novel.  I loved it.  I can't wait for the movie to come out on Netflix even though I know the movies based on books are never the same.

My two favorite characters (Ethan and Hillary) in this book actually weren't the main characters in the story, but both played fairly important roles and added to the dynamic of the story.  I grew to feel sorry for the main character, Rachel, and loathe her self centered, materialistic friend, Darcy.  Their relationship reminded me a lot of one that I had where I played the part of Rachel (except for the sleeping with BFF's fiance part) and it even opened up some old feelings that I had buried away.

I won't go into too much detail about the story for those of you who have not yet read the book or seen the movie, but the basic story is about a woman, Rachel, who slept with her best friend's fiance after her 30th birthday party. The story tells of their affair, the feelings that went along with it, and how they lived happily ever after- or not. You'll have to read to find out!

Do I think that it was okay for Rachel to sleep with her best friend's fiance no matter how vile she was?   No.  Having been cheated on before, I can empathisize with how it feels to be betrayed.  I wasn't even engaged to the guy and it was awful.  We were living together at the time, but I can't imagine how awful I would've felt if we had been engaged.  Darcy lost two people in this story.  Her fiance and her best friend.  In a way, Rachel was no better than her "friend" in that she commited the ultimate betrayal.

Would I chose true love over a friendship, though?  It depends.  If my friend didn't approve of my love interest and it was a healthy relationship I probably would chose love.  I'm a romantic and I feel that if my friendship was genuine, they would love me unconditionally and offer support with my choice in a mate.  If they had a valid reason to not support the relationship (i.e. abuse, past knowledge of said boy's behavior that was damning) then I would hope they would explain themselves and we'd go from there.