Saturday, March 23, 2013
Crazy Thing Called Love
By Molly O’Keefe
Published by Bantam Books
February 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-53369-2
Book provided by Random House and reviewed for LibraryThing.com
Surprise!
Two high-school sweethearts marry and prepare for a life together. Billy Wilkins is a rising star in the hockey league with a bright future playing his dream, but the cost he ends up paying is his wife, Madelyn. They grow apart until one day Madelyn decides to divorce him. Over the next 15 years, Madelyn builds her dream in a journalism career and Billy succeeds as a famous hockey player. Fifteen years later, Billy Wilkins has reached the end of his career and agrees to a guest spot on Madelyn’s popular morning show, much to Madelyn’s dismay.
This is the first of Molly O’Keefe’s books that I have read, and I must confess, I had thoughts of not reading another as I read the first half of this book. I was bored with story of lost-ex-husband-chasing-popular-and-self-sufficient-yet-pathetic-ex-wife. I found the characters to be flat and uninteresting, and the continuing self-imposed prison Madelyn put herself into due to the pain Billy put her through 15 years ago was tedious. I wanted to scream “get over it already”.
I felt this until, midway through the book, Ms. O’Keefe threw her readers a little curveball. This little curveball (which would be a spoiler, so I won’t divulge) brought a plot to the book that I then found myself liking the characters and the growth I was now seeing. This situation change seemed to give the author more to work with and opened up doors for Billy and Maddy to evolve and become more interesting. I began to wonder what was going to happen next, which kept me turning the pages.
All in all, I would say don’t judge this book by the first 100 pages. The author is setting a scene, which is valuable, however, I do believe it could have been accomplished in fewer pages. How the author wraps up this story does make the book worthwhile. I believe I will read another of Ms. O’Keefe’s books.