When I saw Something Borrowed and Something Blue on the "Buy 1, Get 1 Half Price" shelf at Borders a few weeks ago, I immediately snapped them up. I really enjoyed both of these books when I read them a few years ago. While they're firmly entrenched in the Chick Lit camp, Giffin skipped a lot of the standard cliches (as I recalled anyway).Something Borrowed was just as good as I remembered. I think I read it in less than 36 hours, despite already knowing how it would end. The story is about two childhood best friends, Rachel and Darcy, who are now adults and living in New York City. Darcy's always had a charmed life and when the novel starts, she's engaged to a handsome banker named Dex. Rachel, on the other hand, is more of a hardworking wallflower. But, on the night of Rachel's 30th birthday, she gets drunk and sleeps with Dex and drama ensues. (I'm not giving anything away, by the way - this is all on the back cover of the book.) As a reader, you certainly like Rachel from the start and root for her, but I thought Giffin did a good job of giving Darcy some appealing qualities, so that she's not a one-dimensional villain. Giffin also does a good job of revealing the story layer by layer - it's not quite what it seems to be on page one and while it's not over-the-top, I don't think you can really guess what's going to happen, either.
Something Blue, on the other hand, isn't quite as good and I think that's because it relies too much on its predecessor. The second book is Darcy's story and what happens to her after she loses Dex (sorry, it's a spoiler, but it's on the back of this book's cover!). As established in Book One, Darcy is a selfish, self-absorbed girl who occasionally stuck up for her best friend. Those qualities work in Something Borrowed because Darcy's supposed to lose. But then, in Book Two, when she's the heroine you're supposed to care about, it doesn't quite work. And it takes her 210 pages to figure out that she's the most shallow person ever. I think you keep reading through Darcy's selfishness because you want to know what happens to Rachel and Dex, but is that really enough for a book to stand on its own? In contrast to Something Borrowed, Something Blue also has much more of a conventional Chick Lit ending - meaning that everthing gets tied up into neat little bows. It's not terribly cheesy for the genre but still makes it a fluffier book than the first.
On a final note, I noticed a continuity error between Books One and Two. In Something Borrowed, Darcy's father's name is Hugo Rhone, as seen on the wedding invitations (page 242). However, in Book Two, he apparently changed his name to Hugh (page 112). Oops!
Next up: I've started reading Water for Elephants. I'm not terribly captivated at this point (this point being Chapter Three) but since people seem to love it, I'm still keeping on. However, I might start reading Revolutionary Road as I've only got it out of the library until June 3.
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