Sunday 11 March 2012

Review: - Escape by Barbara Delinsky



When Escape landed on my doormat, I had a peek at the first chapter, just to see what I was letting myself in for. This was at around 10.30pm. I finally forced myself to put the book down at 1.30am, because I had to work the next day. It. Is. Great. Reading the blurb I thought it would be quite lightweight and fun, and it really was but it was also really well written, dramatic, and believable.
One Friday morning, Emily suddenly realises that somewhere in life she has chosen the wrong path. She needs to escape; from a job that is suffocating her and a personal life that isn’t making her happy. These days she barely sees her husband James and their attempts to start a family have proven unsuccessful. Realising the fruitlessness and misery of the life she has created for herself, Emily walks out of her office, turns her phone off, packs a bag and leaves New York. She doesn’t even tell James that she’s leaving. But when a new path leads back to her past, and an old lover, a whole new set of problems arise. As Emily begins to carve out a new life, where does that leave everything and everyone she left behind?
(from the blurb)
The book isn’t out in the UK until April 5th, but I wanted to talk about it now because I enjoyed it so much. Originally it appealed to me because of its’ theme – I know there have been plenty of times in the past when I’ve wished I could just walk out on everything and start again somewhere else, and even now, when I’m really happy with my husband, my job, my flat, pretty much with most things, there are still days when I wish I could just not be so in touch with the world. So it resonated from that point of view, but also I found myself really liking all of the characters.
Without giving anything away, the ending is not the one that you would probably expect from the kind of book that this is – Escape is one of those self-discovery type books, but in this case it isn’t just a discovery for Emily, but also for James. Although she focuses on Emily throughout the novel, Delinsky never loses focus on her other characters and allows them room for their thoughts and crises as well. She doesn’t make anybody the bad guy, either which I liked as I really don’t like having to spend half a novel hating somebody for being an indescribable idiot. As well as the major Emily needing to escape her claustrophobic world storyline there is also a bit of dramatic subplot going on which I thought was really great. It could have been overdramatic, but it wasn’t. With this kind of novel I can quite often find myself rolling my eyes and thinking ‘do they really expect me to believe that?!’, but at no point during Escape did this happen. The setting was idyllic, the characters were just lovely, even the flawed ones were flawed in a kind of adorable way, and just reading the book relaxed me which is exactly what I’m looking for when I read this genre. 

I recieved a copy of the book from the publicist for Canvas.

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