I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson Book Review
Written by Olivia Richardson: 23-June-2010
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Book blurb
Meet 2 friends: 13-year-old Petra and Sharon, stoking their dreams in 1970s Wales, and whose screams can be heard in California when they receive the midriff portion of their life-size poster of their teen idol, David Cassidy.
Said midriff is stapled into the official fanzine, an almost-Bible for the girls; and they memorise David’s ‘letters’ to his fans, hoovering up apparently insignificant details, in the hope it will help them qualify as a future Mrs Cassidy. But unbeknownst to Petra (and the thousands of other hopefuls), David’s ‘letters’ are all penned in a grotty London office, miles from the LA set of the Partridge Family.
Bill Finn, English graduate turned reluctant pop impersonator, is forced to compile the Ultimate David Cassidy Quiz which Petra and Sharon enter, in the hope of winning the trip of a lifetime to meet their crush…
Some 20 years later, bruised by grief and her husband’s departure, Petra is living with Molly, her 13-year-old daughter (whose bedroom walls are papered with the new boy on the block, Leonardo DiCaprio). Petra discovers a decades-old letter addressed to her from the now defunct David Cassidy fanzine, informing her that she was the winner the Ultimate Quiz back in ’74. Nearly a quarter of a century late, with her dreams in tatters, Petra decides to claim her prize. It’s not long before Bill is forced to confront the obsessions of her youth with a confession of his own…
Review
This book was really promising! I loved the writing style and the story was fun (made me laugh out loud at times)... but it soon tired when the plot and theme were pretty much the same up until page 176, which is the end of the first half of the book (set in the 70s). I was expecting a big climax (it was all set to happen then and there – for the girls to meet David), but nothing... (I didn't read the book blurb above before I read it, as it isn't on the back of the book, but on the inside front cover flap, where I didn't see it).
The book's quite large in size so fits a lot of words on each page and up until page 176, is thick and dense enough to be a whole book in itself (a story done and dusted), but the story has pretty much been that a group of teen girls are obsessed with David Cassidy, and popularity... I don't think it needed 176 pages to convey that! Now I'm on to the second half, which jumps straight to the main character being a mum with a kid in 1998, and nothing's really happened yet. I'm sure it will all link in and go sha-bam in this second half, but I'm honestly too bored to keep going – there are 150-odd pages to go!
2/5.