Hello everyone!
I am back with another review, today it is She Regrets Nothing by Andrea Dunlop. Thanks so much to BookSparks for sending me a copy of this book for an honest review, as always, all opinions are my own.
This story follows Laila Lawerence, a twenty-something who is moving to New York after the death of her mother and discovering that she has a whole other family. When her father had a falling out with her grandfather, they severed all ties. Now Laila has cousins and aunts and uncles she never knew about. Liberty, the oldest, works as a literary agent and gets her set up with an internship. The twins, Nora and Leo, are slightly more eclectic and share adjoining penthouse apartments. Laila isn't sure how her life is going to go, but she knows she has a family now. But she has a secret, a scandal that no one seems to know about, but shook the family years ago. As she tries to fit into this new life, Laila wonders if she has what it takes to belong.
Now, don't let this gorgeous, pink cover fool you - this is actually a pretty dark book. Laila - and some of the other characters - do some really horrible things, all for the sake of keeping up appearances. I feel like, and I'm saying this as a Canadian who has never been to New York City, that this is the side of New York that no one sees, the gritty, un-spectacular lives, of self-doubt and constant, exhausting competition. Of judgement and bad decisions made to keep the dream alive. So while I don't approve of a lot of the things the characters did, I can appreciate why they did them.
For whatever reason, when I started this book, I felt like it just wasn't jiving for me. It took me about halfway through to realize why - I really did not like Laila. Now, I'm not going to make this a thing, because no one, no woman, is perfect, and she has a right to her flaws, but it just made me like the book a little bit less. Like I said previously, she did bad things - but she also has bad things done to her. You're angry and sympathetic towards her all at the same time and it's such a complex range of emotions. I just wanted to say that when it came to the parts of this book I didn't love, it was usually due to a character, often Laila's, actions.
I'm not really too familiar with Gossip Girl, so I can't really say how closely the comparison is to that but I would imagine that this book is a bit darker than the show? I don't really know, I'm just thinking that this book was almost ~surprisingly~ dark.
Overall, an interesting take on the usual new girl in NYC story with a dark and seedy undertone.