THE LIFE SHE WANTED
Anita Abriel
Lake Union Publishing
July 1, 2023
284 pages
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This book held great promise for me. The storyline sounded great, I loved the time setting, I enjoy books where women show their strength and come into their own.
Yet, somehow, this book didn’t meet my expectations. The writing at the beginning was very slow and simple. This was a character-driven story, but the characters seemed one dimensional. Pandora, our leading lady, was overly focused on marrying “up” so she could start a business. She repeated this fact, over and over. But, she ended up marrying a flawed character. The flaw was a surprise to her yet obvious to me from the first time he appeared.
There were other characters that I would have loved to learn more about. Pandora’s father Willie, a story factory worker named Millie who would have been interesting, and Archie who was a childhood friend. These are some of the characters that played a key part but were never developed to my satisfaction.
One thing I did like was “the lifestyle of the rich and famous” during the 1920s. It was very class oriented and for some reason that fascinates me.
The second half of the book was an improvement, but, for me, it was a long slog to get there. The storyline picked up, more started happening besides tennis matches and opulent galas. Pandora actually became a strong businesswoman.
The ending was predictable. Again, I had figured it out.
For me, this was just an ok read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advance Readers Copy.
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