My review of I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson.

About the book:

1974, Wales. Thirteen-year-old Petra and her best friend, Sharon, are in love with David Cassidy and obsessed with The Ultimate David Cassidy Quiz, a contest whose winners will be flown to America to meet their teen idol. 1998, London. Petra is pushing forty and on the brink of divorce. While cleaning out her mother’s closet, she finds a dusty letter—a letter her mother had intercepted—declaring her the winner of the contest she and Sharon had labored over with such agony and bliss. Twenty-four years later, twenty pounds heavier, the girls reunite for an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas to meet their teen idol at last, middle age—theirs and his—be damned.

Poignant, hilarious, joyful, profoundly moving and uplifting, I Think I Love You captures what girls learn about love through the universal experience of worshipping a teen dream. It will resonate with readers everywhere.

My review:


There were some parts about this book that I enjoyed and some things that went on and on and didn't seem to connect to anything else. I did love all the Welsh terms and the English slang. Because my grandmother's father was from Wales I found that particularly endearing. I also remember the girlhood crushes and Teen Beat magazine (or was it Tiger Beat?) Anyway, we all had crushes on Leif Garrett, Scott Baio, Ralph Macchio, etc, in my generation. Those were the hairless cuties. Funny how pre-pubescent girls all thing the sort-of feminine looking guys were hot, right? 


There were some good thoughts in this book about that type of romanticism and how unrealistic it is, but how real it feels to the devotee. David Cassidy was a tad before my time. But not by much. I was raised on The Brady Bunch. I remember sighing over Greg Brady, too. Anyway, that's not all that this book is about. It's also about people finding themselves and who they are. If you read it for mere entertainment, you might miss that part. I always read a book looking for a message. I found the message tucked in the pages, but it wasn't as easy to find as I'd hoped. This book could have been tighter if it had been about a hundred pages shorter. Then I may have read it faster and not gotten so lost in the many details. 


I liked how the story ended, but it's still a bit sad to me because of a few loose ends. Not a bad read, though. Just not exceptional. Oh, and the buggers and the blimmin were not so bad, but the f bombs were a bit more frequent than I care to read. I really hate that word.


I Think I Love You was published by Knopf Doubleday and release in February 2011. A copy of this book was provided to me by an assistant to the publicity team at Planned TV Arts/a division of Ruder Finn Inc.