| Read & Reviewed | What Nora Knew by Linda Yellin

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2stars, book review, chick lit, Linda Yellin, Netgalley, Nora Ephron, reading, What Nora Knew

What Nora Knew by Linda Yellin

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

ebook, 320 pages
Published January 21st 2014 by Gallery Books
Available on: Paperback, Kindle

I wanted to like this book a lot. I mean if you check out Linda Yellin’s website or Facebook posts you’d think this book would be charming, romantic, witty, fun and full of those chick lit-ish details every chick lit reader loves.

Sadly for me this book didn’t have all that. It was only an OK read.

Let me start with the beginning of course. Chapter one: 41 pages. An introduction a little too long for my taste. We meet Molly. I couldn’t immediately click with her as I am not in her situation and she seemed to be suffering of a big post-divorce depression. Forty more pages ahead and it still felt like an introduction. I had enough of that and was expecting to get to the part where she finds love and romance and all the sweeping off her feet things.

Forty six more pages ahead and you can already predict Molly’s going to end up with Cameron. IMHO, there was just too much build up for this. I hoped she was going to be swept off her feet and it just didn’t happen like that. I still can’t bond with her, she is too bitter, negative, cynic and sarcastic for my taste at this point.

Almost halfway into the book and I kept wondering when were they going to fall in love à la Meg and Tom? I kept reading but you get to page 241 and she still hasn’t fallen in love with Cameron! Seriously? It just took too long.

What Nora Knew tried to be a tribute to Nora Ephron but plot wise it wasn’t. The author kept referring to Sleepless in Seattle, as if with that Ephron would be honored. But the constant mentions of Sleepless in Seattle turned out to be trite, dreadful and annoying. The more you read the words “Sleepless in Seattle“, the less this book felt like Sleepless in Seattle. (See what I mean? How did you feel when reading sleepless in seattle so much in one paragraph? Now you know the feeling when you read it in the book!)

I was glad when I finally finished this book. The end was too predictable for my taste. The story had a lot of potential but it just didn’t have the Nora Ephron charm.

I didn’t get the romance it was supposed to have. In Nora Ephron’s stories you want to be the girl in the story. This didn’t happen to me with Linda Yellin’s story. It sure had short laughable moments and quotes in the midst of all, but that was it. I wouldn’t expect a box office hit from this book either.

If you want a light quick funny-ish read to pass the time What Nora Knew is for you. I do have to say you won’t get a Meg-and-Tom-movie love story but it’s ok to pass the time and carry on.

Note to editors: Not that it should matter anymore as this book was already published but in the copy I got there’s a typo on page 141: it reads “hercubicle” and should be “her cubicle”.

Yes, they sound like clichés but these were the best I could find in the midst of it all.

Squeezing breasts into pancakes all day has to be one of the worst jobs ever, in a serious tie with driving a Hertz bus in circles between the airport terminal and the parking lot. And those museum guards.

If love were easy, it wouldn’t feel like magic when you finally got it right.

If only falling in real life love were this easy. Take a big breath and open your eyes.

I wanted to feel cherished. I wanted to feel adored. I wanted someone to look at me as if the sun and moon set on me or rose on me or whatever it was you want planets to do when someone thanks their lucky stars for you. I wanted someone to get me and then love what he got. Most of all, I wanted to believe, re-believe, that was possible.

He said cynicism’s self-protection, a defense mechanism used by cowards who give up on love because they’re afraid love’s given up on them.

I was surrounded by pea pods. My girlfriends. My family. Soul mates were falling out of trees.

• Scuttlebutt: talk or stories about someone that may not be true.
  
• Triter: not interesting or effective because of being used too often: not fresh or original.
• Wisenheimer: Synonyms smarty (or smartie), smarty-pants, wiseacre, wiseass.
• Picayune: 1. Half Dime. 2. something trivial.
• Lothario: a man whose chief interest is seducing women.

All definitions from: The Merriam Webster Dictionary

  

Paperback // Kindle

Paperback

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

I received a copy of this book but was not financially compensated in any way nor obliged to review. The opinions expressed are my own and are based on my personal experience while reading it. This post contains affiliate links as stated in my disclosure policy.