Something Borrowed

Rachel is a self-proclaimed goody-goody who is constantly trying to please others: her parents, her boss, her friends, and especially her best friend, Darcy. Rachel and Darcy have been friends since they were little girls. Perhaps that’s why Rachel is used to being in Darcy’s shadow. She’s been there a long time. To Rachel it seems that Darcy has a charmed life. Darcy is beautiful. She’s confident. She has a glamorous, well-paying job, and she has an amazingly handsome, successful fiancé. However Rachel’s point of view changes drastically on the night of her thirtieth birthday celebration when Darcy’s incredible fiancé, Dexter, and Rachel share a cab home and end up in bed together. Rachel, who has never really been head-over-heels in love, begins to fall hard for Dexter. It turns out Rachel is the one who introduced Dexter to Darcy. Dexter and Rachel were in law school together. Rachel thought Dex was out of her league back then, but now she realizes she was wrong. She begins to wonder what else she was wrong about. Maybe Darcy isn’t so perfect after all. Maybe her best friend has been abusing their friendship for a long, long time. Could it maybe be okay to risk a life-long friendship for the possibility of a lifetime of love?

Much like Time of My Life, this book really disturbed me at first. But unlike, Time of My Life, this book continued to bother me throughout the entire story. First of all no matter how self-centered one’s best friend is, I have a real problem with someone having an affair with her best friend’s fiancé. I kept thinking, “Boy this guy would have to really be something special to make it worth losing your oldest friend.” And I just didn’t feel the author made Dex extraordinary enough to warrant the betrayal. For one thing, anyone who would run around with his fiancée’s best friend for so long without breaking off the engagement is a straight-up jerk or totally spineless (in my opinion). I also didn’t have much feeling invested in the main character. She wasn’t really anything special. Not particularly smart or funny or unique in any way. I was much more interested in the minor characters: Hilary, the tomboy lawyer who speaks her every thought, Marcus, Dexter’s very intelligent, funny friend who somehow graduated second to last in his college class, and of course, there is Darcy, who the author is definitely trying to make unlikeable. She’s selfish and spoiled, but at least she’s interesting. In fact Darcy is the main reason I had little respect for Rachel’s character. There are maybe two instances in the book where the reader gets a tiny glimpse of Darcy’s sweet side. Otherwise, she’s a total brat most of the time. I think the author doesn’t want you to feel too sorry for Darcy, but it made me feel even less sorry for Rachel. “What kind of wimp or dummy puts up with this kind of friend for twenty-five years!?” I asked myself. “And she’s just NOW figuring out her friendship with Darcy is a little one-sided? Duh!”

Don’t misunderstand me, I actually found this book very interesting. It was easy to read, and I read it quickly because I wanted to find out how the story ended. I just didn’t find myself rooting for the main character (like the blurb on the front cover promised). The second book in the series, Something Blue, is written from Darcy’s point of view. I have higher hopes for that one, because as I said before, she may not be a great person but she IS a great character! A friend recommended this book to me, and I would probably recommend it to my other friends as well. It’s an intriguing story, but I’d say just don’t expect to fall in love with the two secret lovers. Lancelot and Guinevere they are not!