The book : Us
The Author: David Nicholls
Rating: 2/5
"Douglas Petersen understands his wife's need to 'rediscover herself' now that their son is leaving home. He just thought they'd be doing their rediscovering together.
So when Connie announces that she will be leaving, too, he resolves to make their last family holiday into the trip of a lifetime: one that will draw the three of them closer, and win the respect of his son. One that will make Connie fall in love with him all over again.
The hotels are booked, the tickets bought, the itinerary planned and printed.
What could possibly go wrong?"
I am one of the few that has neither read David Nicholls
famous ‘One Day’ or seen the film. For some reason the fact Anne Hathaway being in it doesn’t sit well with me! Therefore going by the way everyone sang
it’s praises I expected good things with ‘us’ and was looking forward to get
stuck in.
The book is told from Douglas’ point of view. It starts with
his wife Connie informing him that she’s thinking of leaving him. After years
of marriage this obviously comes as a bit of a shock to poor ol’ Douglas. As
Albie their son is also leaving for university soon they have a ‘Grand Tour’
trip planned around Europe, Douglas hopes that this trip can help bring him and
Connie closer and be a great send off for Albie… This is another one of those books
that has flashbacks to the past where we get to learn how Douglas and Connie
came to be, along with pivotal points in their relationship that are worth
mentioning. I think it’s lovely that we get to find this out, but the more you
read, I found that this was definitely more of an opposites attract kind of
relationship.
I will admit that I found it really tough to get into this
book, happily stopping to throw in my bookmark when my train rolled into the
station on my commute. (I’ve been known to carry on reading until I actually
get out of the station before with some books as I have been so gripped by
them!) I was never that gripped by it. As I explained to Tom it’s…very wordy.
Nicholls likes to really set the scene using lots of descriptive words which I
feel at times were a little unnecessary and made some of the chapters a bit of
a drag to read! One positive I can take from this though, is that reading about
the different countries in Europe has
made me want to book a fair few European city breaks, so it’s not all bad that
he goes into quite some detail!
Throughout the book I found myself disliking both Connie and
Albies characters, and felt a little bit of sympathy for Douglas. I think because
I didn’t like these two, it made this book frustrating to read and I became
quite bored of it. I even got to the point where I skim read quite a few
chapters just so I could finish it in time for this review. Mainly those when
they were very descriptive of the art in the galleries they visited (FYI Lots
of Art references in this book if you like that sort of thing) The story took a while to get going and
probably three quarters of the way through it got a little bit exciting but not
enough to make me say it’s something you have to rush out to read.
Since finishing the book and having a look at reviews on
amazon, it’s clear that there is a bit of a divide between those who have read
it. They seem to really enjoy it or dislike it quite a bit. I’m afraid to say I
am the latter. It was just a bit too boring and didn’t keep me interested
unfortunately.
I’m interested to find out what the other girls think of
this months book as I wasn't really fan myself. You can have a read of what they say on their blogs here…
Charli, Lorna & Lizzie.
Click here to read last months blogger book club review; The Two of us by Andy Jones
Click here to read last months blogger book club review; The Two of us by Andy Jones
For the Month of September we will be reading The Good Girlby Fiona Neill. So if you want to be part of book club let us know, have a read
& pop a review blog post (Or Youtube video) up on Monday September 28th.
Much Love,