"Something Borrowed" by Emily Giffin

Two Stars

Rachel has spent her entire life playing the good-girl sidekick to her best friend Darcy, who leads a perfect life. Darcy has it all looks, an awesome PR job, a fancy New York apartment, and the ideal fiancé, Dex, whom Rachel happens to be in love with. While Rachel has always worked hard and played it safe earning a small studio New York apartment, a job as an over-worked associate at a large firm, and a non-existent love life.

This is how life just is and always has been for these BFF’s, until the night before Rachel’s thirtieth birthday.

After the surprise birthday party Darcy threw for her, Rachel sleeps with Dex. At first she thinks it was a drunken mistake, then Dex confesses that he has feelings for her. As the wedding date gets closer, Rachel is faced with the moral dilemma of whether or not to put her personal wants ahead of her life-long friendship.

I didn’t really like this book. It was well written, the characters were believable, and the plot was not very predictable. I just hated everyone in it. They were all morally corrupt, self-centered jerks.

Rachel is whiny and jealous of Darcy, but happy to follow along and enjoy the benefits of their friendship. She thinks she morally superior, smarter, and basically a better person than Darcy. But she spends the whole book betraying, lying, and plotting against her supposed best and oldest friend.

Dex is a scumbag for cheating on his fiancé whom he has been with for seven years. I couldn’t understand why Rachel would want to be with someone who would behave like that. If they’ll do it with ya, they’ll do it to ya, girl. Way to pick a winner, good luck with that one!

The end tries to balance things out and, I’m assuming, make Rachel and Dex look less awful, but I just don’t care. You can’t justify your behavior based on someone else’s, especially when you find out about theirs after the fact. You’re choices show who you are and Rachel is a lying cheat. Sorry, it is what it is.

The book is getting two stars because I didn’t hate it, it’s not that it’s a bad book, on the contrary the book is technically sound. It moves along quickly and the characters are very real. It’s just that I did not like the people in it and don’t really want to spend more time with them because they’re all jerks.