Book Review

I Think I Love You, by Stephanie Bond

B+

Title: I Think I Love You
Author: Stephanie Bond
Publication Info: St. Martin's Paperbacks 2002
ISBN: 0312983336
Genre: Contemporary Romance

This book passed the “I have to take it out of my purse and read it at home” test – a sure bet that it’s a good story. Regina Metcalf, the heroine, is a book editor in Boston with roots in North Carolina, a place where roots go down to deeper levels than she would prefer, who lives a very plain-yogurt life. Plain yogurt, as Hubby once said, is even blander than vanilla yogurt. Regina is, however, from the get-go, a Very Good Person. She mines the slush pile of her publishing house for untapped treasures, and anyone with a remedial knowledge of book publishing knows that the editor who wades through the slush looking for a gem is truly a character with a Heart of Gold.

Regina is contemplating the vanilla-plainness of her life, and just as I thought she was going to irk me to no end due to her Heart of Gold, Regina is summoned home by her tearful mother due to Family Drama with her common-law-partner parents. Then I met the rest of Regina’s family in subsequent chapters and felt so almighty sorry for the girl I had to keep reading just to cheer her on.

Because her family, it is The Suck. Her elder sister, Justine, is an egomaniac ball buster who was all set to marry the man of her dreams when the youngest sister, Mica, ran off with him the morning of their wedding. Several years later, Justine is an exec in a makeup company who busts balls and is a general beeyotch to everyone who works with her, until one day the disgruntled wife of one of the (many) married men she sleeps with bursts into her staff meeting and threatens to kill off the employees one by one unless Justine proves that she was or wasn’t with the woman’s husband that afternoon. I won’t go into the manner in which Justine has to prove said activity, but it is quite a scene. Justine barely escapes with her life, and after dealing with the immediate repurcussions of her behavior both in and out of the office, decides on the advice of a kind police officer to head home to North Carolina to see her family, hide out from the yet-uncaptured disgruntled wife, and recuperate.

Mica, meanwhile, ran off to LA with the fiance, Dean, and is now a contracted hair model and minor celebrity, living a very wild and exhausting life. She finds herself confronted with the mess her career and health have become due to Dean’s over-involvement, and her agent, a sensitive man named Everett, directs her to leave Dean, go to the doctor, and take better care of herself, as she is in danger of losing her contract with the hair care company. She decides also to head home to hide from Dean and further heal herself.

The family reunion is set against the backdrop of an unsolved murder that the three sisters witnessed when they were much younger, as the accused and convicted murderer manages to secure a hearing to determine if a conspiracy or inept police work caused his conviction. Ultimately, the sisters have to come forward with what they saw, which further implicates them and damages their already fragile relationships with one another.

So, hello, the Malfunction Sisters are converging on Monroeville, North Carolina, and Regina has to referee the ongoing battles between Mica and Justine, mediate the dissolving partnership and business interests of her parents, assist a hunka-hunka-burnin’ love named Mitchell with the itemization and appraisal of the value of her parents’ antiques store for liquidation purposes, figure out who committed the murder she and her sisters witnessed 20 years prior, and manage to find her own way to happiness.

Regina rules. Loved her. Loved how she learned to ignore her sisters when they were being childish brats – which was far too freaking often – and loved how she learned to appreciate herself even though she felt like no one in her family appreciated her. Loved how she began to appreciate her own value, and recognize her own talents. In short, love how she began to love herself.

I loved the romance between Regina and Mitchell, though I wish he were as full fleshed a character as Regina was, but since this book danced the line between women’s fiction, suspense, and romance so many times I began to accept that he was partly a hero and partly a catalyst for her developing character. Mitchell has his own backstory, and since just about every character is a suspect in the suspense plot woven through the book, his history is a slowly revealed puzzle, which allowed him to be slightly suspicious, even though I knew I could count on his innocence since he was the hero to Regina’s heroine.

But more than anything: I loved the dog. Mitchell has a dog, Sam, who is the best part of the book. While he doesn’t have wild antics and a subtle personality like a Crusie or a Donovan animal sidekick, Sam is a constant and adorable character, lending empathy when needed and serving as an emotional barometer to various scenes.

I read this book straight through in about 24 hours, from two bus rides in and out of Manhattan and an evening on the sofa, and I have to say what hooked me most was Bond’s skill with dialogue. Much of the book is dialogue, and very little description outside of setting the mood of the scene by decribing the environment the characters were in – and more often than not one of the characters did the describing. Bond is skilled with the clever conversation and since I tend to skim paragraphs of exposition in favor of the dialogue when I read, I ended up reading just about every word on the page. 

My problems with this book rest mostly on the development of Justine and Mica. Mica, the youngest, ran off with her sister’s fiance and ended up in a horrible, addictive and abusive relationship with him. Her decision ultimately became her own punishment, so in my eyes she started off even – she’s living the atonement for her major infraction.

But Justine is just horrid. She’s a downright nasty person and has a long, long way to go back to redemption in my eyes, and even as she dances around changing the parts of herself that were so inherently unlikeable, she would still backslide into further sticky territory as a character, forcing me to wonder if she would ever truly be redeemed in my eyes. In the end, I’d have to say she wasn’t, because she managed to make every situation about her, and in the end committed a horrible assault on Mica that seemed, to me, to be far too easily forgiven. Her realization of how shitty her behavior had been throughout the story was not nearly as wrenching as I thought she deserved. She was a witch and I wanted her to pay.

Lastly, still on the “just desserts” topic, while she is a fascinating character and well worth reading about as the middle sister who realizes her own worth is something that she herself has to define, Regina never fully received any real acknowledgement or apology from anyone in her family, from the parents who take her for granted to the sisters who band together despite their own issues to heap abuse on her as if she weren’t really a person worth their consideration. However, Regina’s increased strength and resolve to take care of herself and to not allow her family to hurt her anymore is a much more realistic resolution than to have her family come on bended knee pleading for forgiveness. Family doesn’t change easily, and you can’t really expect a family member to wake up one Afterschool-Special later and realize, “Oh, I’ve been horrible! I must change my wicked ways!” While the part of me that empathized with and rooted for Regina wanted some serious groveling, I have to admit that the novel’s ending did ring true to how real families move past their discord.

This is the first Stephanie Bond book I’ve read, and if they are all like this I’ve got me some glomming to do. I don’t often encounter authors who can effortlessly blend suspense, mystery, romance, women’s fiction, and family drama in a novel that still manages to be somewhat light and certainly funny. I Think I Love You deals with some real issues, and while the romance sometimes takes a backseat to the murder and the family mishegas, the happily ever after is more than satisfying.

Comments are Closed

  1. Alyssa says:

    This book sounds intriguing. Off I go to my library website to see if they carry it . . .

  2. Kristin says:

    I hadn’t heard of Stephanie Bond, so I looked her up on Amazon after reading your review.  I think I will have to put in a special request for you to review her newest book coming out this fall:

    In Deep Voodoo

    Is not that the best title ever!?  I love it!

  3. Sarah says:

    Oh my gosh -that is a fantastic title. There have been a few titles that make me go, “Huh! Creative!” That’s definitely one of them, along with “The Givenchy Code,” and “Carpe Demon,” which is about a demon-hunting soccer mom.

    I might seriously have to read that last one.

  4. Sarah says:

    Of course, as I was reading this book, the title put that annoying Partridge Family song in my head. Yeesh.

  5. priyanka says:

    hey, its great to see that ms. bond is back in form.
    I’d started reading her work at the local public library because she was one of the few authors with the funky covers (it’s a good way to CHOOSE a book … this ofcourse being the era before common blogging)
    In the past her work has been rather up and down, some great novels, some i can’t believe the same woman wrote this.
    will check this one out

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