(30) The Big Love by Sarah Dunn

I apologize for my absence. I moved this past weekend & my life, for the last week, has been devoted to packing & unpacking boxes. But now I am done and I have created the perfect little reading nook in the bay window of my new house. It was here that I finished my latest book, The Big Love, by Sarah Dunn.

I am firmly convinced that Sarah Dunn is the one author that relates the best to me. I suspected it when I read her other book, but now I am convinced. It is great to read a book that you can identify with, but to have actually had to deal with the same weird situations as the heroine in not one, but two books? LOL it is almost frightening.

Alison Hopkins is living the charmed life. She lives with her boyfriend, Tom. She is a writer for a Philly newspaper, and she has an amazing group of friends. She is hosting a dinner party & sends Tom out to pick up some mustard. But her world falls apart when he calls to say he isn't coming back. Ever.

Alison does what every girl who has just been dumped does, she does a relationship autopsy. She dissects every fight, every conversation they ever had looking for clues that she missed the first time. Trying to figure out what she could have done differently to prevent Tom from running to the arms of his ex-girlfriend. She tries to reconcile her strict, evangelical upbringing with the woman she is now and what she is looking for in a boyfriend:

I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted a boyfriend who was Christian, but who wasn't too uptight about it, who was good-looking and intelligent and had an interesting job and a sense of humor, who said "fuck" when the situation
warranted it, who had attempted but been unable to finish St Augusine's City of God, who could argue politics with my mother and talked business with my father, who liked Indian food and had nice friends and knew how to dress and would like to someday live abroad.

Oh yeah. That would be the ideal boyfriend. LOL. Does he really exist? Or is that kind of "wish list" unrealistic?

Alison has to take a good, hard look at herself. At her wants & needs in a relationship. And when Tom wants to come back, will Alison welcome him with open arms? Or did she learn enough about herself to be able to see that she deserves so much more.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Big Love. I know what it is like to hope & dream for "the big love". I know, quite painfully, what it is like to try & force "the big love" where it will never be. It is hard. And embarrassing. But it is a lesson that I felt I had to learn.

At least I know I am not alone. The Alison Hopkins' of the world are out there to keep me company.