“What?
Did he just say…
68 more years of marriage?”
Kinsella’s quirky and comical stories have been an all time favorites ever since the first Shopaholic I picked up. She has always had an ease she wrote with; and a warm and charming way of portraying her female protagonists with humor. And like her many previous novels, that ease carries on in “Surprise Me”.
Sylvie and Dan have happily been married for 7 years now, with 2 beautiful daughters. They knew everything about each other, finished each other’s sentences. Yes, they were that couple. Everything is going well until, soon enough they at the doctors and they find out that they are healthy and in perfect shape. Who wouldn’t what to hear that, right? More than the joy living a long life, what took them by surprise was hearing they were going to be married for 68 years more!
“I hope you’ve got plenty of crossword puzzles to keep you going!” The doctor chortles merrily.
Once the shock of the moment wears off, Sylvie and Dan worry about how they are going to keep their marriage sparkling and alive. They decide to give each other surprises to keep the magic alive. Though some of the surprises are Kinsella’s style of bringing in the laughs, which, her classic way of writing has a way of wrapping those situations with laughter and giggles. Especially when Dan brings home a pet snake to surprise his wife!
Another character I really enjoyed was Sylvie’s best friend and neighbor Tilda. Who also, in her quirky ways, helps her friend with project “surprise me”; with her own thoughts on marriage. “May cause headache, anxiety, mood swings, sleep disturbance or general feeling of wanting to stab something”
Though the attempts of surprises bring out the fun side of the book, it also takes a slow detour towards a whole of “not so fun” events happening in her life, with Sylvie’s work and family. Amidst the many surprises they were presenting each other with, Sylvie finds out secrets about Dan that bursts her reality of the unrealistic bubble she lived in, of their picture-perfect family and finds herself questioning on how well she actually knows her husband and parents.
I did enjoy the book thoroughly, but probably not as much as I have her other books. The serious turn of events did take me by surprise, very not like what she has written before. Nevertheless it had all its elements chic-lit and it was the perfect light read you want to curl up with at the end of a long day.
“If love is easy, then you're not doing it right.”