Review's Resort: Tome Thursday: Two by Two

Hello everyone!

Yet again, I find myself in that inevitable trap that I will sometimes fall into. It's called the Sparks Syndrome.

Yeah, I named it. Aren't I cute?

The point of this Sparks Syndrome is that, every once in a while, despite my better judgment and DEFINITELY despite what I KNOW will turn out true for every one of his books, I will INEVITABLY pick up one of his (one of the newer ones, that is) and read through it, because something compels me to do so.

Maybe it's my obsessive compulsive mind that keeps telling me I have to READ EVERYTHING OR ELSE. RAWR.

Ahem.

Anyway.

So I went and decided that, out of the two newer ones I hadn't yet read (these being See Me and Two by Two) I was going to pick the one with the cute little girl on the cover, meaning, Two by Two.

I know.

I'm a glutton for punishment.

But what I DIDN'T know, or didn't anticipate, was just how much punishment I would be submitting myself to while reading this.

Allow me to give you a fair warning in advance: this is going to be one of those rant-y reviews.

Now, normally, when I read Nicholas Sparks, I am well prepared. I've been through the ringer a number of times already and I know, generally speaking, how it's going to go. There's going to be love, there will be obstacles, someone will quite possibly die and make me wish I'd invested in Kleenex boxes, but in the end, life will right itself out.

Ha. Aren't I an eternal optimist.

This one ... well, it had every other Sparks characteristic. There was definitely love, mistakes were made, there was a cute little girl, then there was death.

But there were also the main characters.

Where, on Earth, do I start?

Let's do a summary first: Russ is one of those guys every woman apparently loves to be friends with, but no one actually wants to date (aka, friendzoned forever; I think he has more real estate bought in the area than Cisco and Winn), but then he DOES date a fantastic woman, Emily, and ends up cheating on her, because ... I have no idea. The author never really explains it all that much, just saying that, for some reason, this man who is the epitome of a romantic and will flay himself out of his own skin for the girl he's with, ends up in bed with another woman while in a relationship with Emily.

Of course, she dumps his ass (and goes on to marry a serial cheater, but that's another story), and he's tragically all alone again.

Until he meets Vivian.

Now, Vivian looked like the perfect match for him and they end up getting married, and have all these plans that young couples do, which does involve having a child, and thus, London is born. But then things start going haywire just when I thought I was going to get something fairly normal.

I got a blender.

Vivian is more and more impossible to deal with, blaming Russ for everything, never giving him a chance to have an opinion without telling him he's the bad guy, never allowing him in for important decisions, and generally speaking being a ... well, it rhymes with witch, and it has a capital letter B. I won't even mention she flirts shamelessly with his boss and ends up cheating on him with her own boss.

That would all have been fine and dandy if it didn't border on emotional abuse and if Russ had DONE SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

In the words of the immortal Hercule Poirot: mesopotamia quote

And yet, Russ just stands there and takes it all. Rolls over and tries to please her even more.

I guarantee you, she wouldn't walk over him half as much if he just stuck his boot up her ass at least one time.

So, basically, the marriage falls apart, and then the ugly legal battle begins because, surprise, surprise, Vivian wants sole custody of London even though SHE was the one who walked out on HER HUSBAND AND DAUGHTER and is now, woe is me, I can't see her as much as I want.

Well, tough.

I should also mention that Russ had the brilliant idea of starting his own business (which ended with Vivian getting a job and everything going kaput, natch), which does in fact take off towards the second half of the book, thankfully, so he isn't a total waste of space.

But the way Vivian treats him ... seriously, someone around them should have said something. Family members, much?

The only subplot worth reading was the one with Russ' family where his sister Marge ends up with stage IV cancer and passes away, the tear-jerker. And oh, the father-daughter bonding.

Russ eventually moves to Atlanta so that Vivian doesn't get ugly in court (after she practically accused him of being a paedophile anyway), and Emily (oh, yes, he reconnects with her!), divorced Emily, moves herself and her son, London's best friend, to Atlanta too, so they can continue with their relationship, finally.

All in all, this book was one huge internal monologue and rambling of a guy who needed a boot so far up his ass he would have been coughing on the heel of it. There is just no way for me to believe that Russ wouldn't have stood up for himself at least once. At least when Vivian accused him of all those unspeakable things. I would have thrown something at her head.

Needless to say, I was thoroughly disappointed with this book, and it could have been two hundred pages shorter, too. I didn't connect with Russ or Vivian at all, which obviously didn't help.

London was the only saving grace of this whole spectacle.

*image not mine