Monday, February 11, 2013

REVIEW: Something Like Fate by Susane Colasanti

I've been a big fan of Susane Colasanti over the years.  I like her gentle contemporary YA romances and I've gone out of my way to acquire her books when they've been published in the US.  But, as I've discovered recently, there is a topic that I really don't like in my stories - even if a favourite author writes it - and that topic is when a girl falls in love with her best friend's boyfriend.  And unfortunately, that is the main topic of Something Like Fate.  Which is why I put off reading this book for such a long time.  So while I did enjoy reading this book for the most part, there was also plenty that I didn't much like as well.

Lani and Erin are best friends.  They went through some traumatic stuff a few years ago and Lani feels a huge amount of gratitude towards Erin for her part in saving Lani's life.  She almost feels indebted to Erin.  And even though Lani and Erin have been drifting apart recently, there is still that strong girl-bond between them.  So when Erin starts dating Jason and Lani starts falling for him too, Lani makes a choice that nothing will happen.  That her friendship with Erin is more important.

I always feel like these stories about falling in love with your best friend's boyfriend have very little to do with the boy and everything to do with the friendship between the two girls.  Unfortunately, I never really warmed up to Erin as a best friend.  It feels as though as we're told more about this long history that is shared between them and we don't really see much of it.

I did like that in a roundabout way, there was some sort of commentary being made about palm reading and astrology and psychics and how each of these plays its part with 'fate' and how all of that can be easily misread or believed in such a way that it is easy to twist signs and coincidences into reasons why two people should be together (or apart). I didn't like it at first, I feel like people who believe in fate and things like psychics and so on, like Lani does, are taking away their levels of choice in their own lives. Leaving things like your relationship status, friendships and your own happiness up to some higher power feels lazy and like a character such as Lani has no power over her own life in any meaningful way.

The other thing that bothered me is Lani's belief that other people's happiness and other people's choices and decisions are more important or are worth more than her own. It takes Lani most of the novel to work through this though and I'm happy with the way in which it is resolved.  Lani's friendships throughout the book are many, and I liked that.  It is always nice to see a main character with a varied support network around her, even if all of the friendships don't last.  I really liked her friendship with both Blake and Connor and could understand the ups and downs of Lani's friendships with other characters. 

All in all, Something Like Fate was a cute and entertaining story.  I was surprised by the lengths that Lani goes to in order to avoid her feelings for Jason for the sake of her friendship with Erin.  I did very much like that no cheating takes place, but I felt like the 'mean girls' element towards the end of the story destroyed any hope that I had that friendships could or should be restored.  Still, while I didn't particularly enjoy this story as much, I do still love Susane Colasanti and will continue to look out for her books!

2 comments:

  1. I really like the few of Susane Colasanti's I've read. I need to get my hands on this one! I wish they were published over here...

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    1. One of hers was picked up by a UK publisher and I lived in hope that more would be published..

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