January 18, 2015

Review: The One Plus One


The One Plus One
The One Plus One by Jojo Moyes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Ugh. This book was so hard to read and it is so hard to rate it. Jojo Moyes is clearly a wonderful author, and I will probably read more books by her. But this book was very depressing most of the time. Sometimes I even had to put it down and read something lighter (compared to this book, a crime by Agatha Christie with lots of people dying is light), because I couldn't cope with the depression it made me feel. The worst thing about it was that I couldn't even cry, as I often do. I just had this heavy feelings in my chest and couldn't let them out. I kept thinking that there are indeed women who live in this kind of wretchedness with their children, who and whose children have no hope, and whose Prince Charming will never come. I was prepared for reading a fluffy, light, and funny romance, upon reading the reviews on Goodreads. However, what I got was a heavy drama, even though this is a Cinderella story and there's a happy ending. The heroine and her little family, together with the hero experience almost every kind of problems you could imagine. Even at moments where you think it can't get worse, it just does. There were some moments where I had a moment of happy feeling and found myself laughing out loud. (Moyes clearly has a good sense of humour.) But in the next second, something bad happens, and your feeling of happiness disappears by the "speed of light". Only in the last 4-5 chapters can you enjoy lasting happiness, if you refrain from thinking - what I was thinking - that in real life things definitely wouldn't turn out like this. Of course, I too believe in the "the kindness of strangers" and "forgiveness", but very often, if you make a mistake, you have to live with it, and won't get back what you have lost. So actually, the happy ending felt somewhat odd in light of the whole book. All in all, if you are not as highly emotional as me, or if you don't mind feeling depressed all the time, you will very much love this book, because it is well written and the characters are all very likable. You may also want to re-read it. As for me, I'm not sure when/if I'll ever be able to re-read it.



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