Two people. One impossible situation. (The Girl In Times Square - Paullina Simons)

Member Name: aylawarner

Product:	The Girl In Times Square - Paullina Simons
Date:	02/11/09 (72 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Wonderul storyline and characters, very gripping and compelling

Disadvantages: Couldn't get into it at first, sometimes made me feel miserable

Lily Quinn is just a normal young girl, trying to graduate from college and struggling to pay the rent on her tiny New York apartment. But when her roommate and best friend, Amy, disappears, the events in Lily's life seem to spiral out of control.

Two life-changing events, one good, one bad, find Lily and through Amy's disappearance she has to cope with her own troubles. Help comes in the form of Spencer O'Malley, the detective working on Amy's case, and against all odds he also brings love and happiness to Lily's life.

But through all Lily's struggles and through Spencer's investigation, Lily is forced to question her whole life and the beliefs she held of both her friend and her family.

~ My opinion ~
I'd been recommend this book by someone who couldn't stop saying how much she had enjoyed it and how much of an effect it had had on her so I was very intrigued to see what all the fuss was about.

The first part of the book starts off being written in a slightly weird way, and jumps from one character to another so at times I wasn't even sure who I was reading about. It's quite a slow start and I didn't really get into the book until a good way in. But the story soon unravels and has many shocks and twists along the way which are all very intriguing and compelling. When Lily and Spencer eventually got together, this is when the book became a lot more interesting and from then on I couldn't put it down.

Lily is a wonderful main character. She is only young and doesn't have much in life, like any normal person in their early 20s. She is trying to finish college, struggling to pay her rent, dealing with love and heartbreak, yet she also has fun with her friends, watching DVDs and going out on the town. But the events she meets in her life means that all the usual things a young girl has to deal with seem like a million years away, yet she is a very character strong who deals with them wonderfully and she knows exactly what she wants from life.

Even though Spencer is quite a bit older than Lily and there are reasons that they shouldn't be together, the chemistry is very apparent from the start and they make an amazing couple. Spencer has his own problems but they each seem to be a saving grace to the other and their relationship was so happy and loving that, despite all the problems surrounding them, I just wanted to see them be together.

The one thing that I didn't understand in the book is how any mother can be so uncaring towards her daughter. Lily's mother, Allison, has her own problems which we find out about throughout the book but, because of these problems, she has become an alcoholic and can't get through the day without hurting herself in some way and blaming all those around her, including her youngest daughter. Even when she knows that Lily has been unwell in hospital for days with leukaemia, Allison still holds a grudge against her daughter for not calling to see how her mother is doing and she just doesn't seem to care that her daughter could possibly die. The rest of Lily's family didn't seem that much more caring to be honest, apart from her grandmother who took care of her.

There are an awful lot of bad themes in the book including kidnap, murder, cancer, alcoholism and abuse, and poor Lily has to be the strongest person in history to have been able to deal with them all. Paullina Simons tackles each issue with so much depth and description that it throws us right into the heart of it and makes us feel as if we are actually there with Lily experiencing it all. She has an amazing way of writing that managed to have a huge effect on me. Whenever there was a happy part in the book such as when Lily was in love and enjoying her life, I felt happy and in love too, but when something miserable was going on in the book, such as when Lily was ill and couldn't bear to go on, I found myself feeling really miserable myself and would end up feeling pretty depressed.

At first I wasn't too sure about this book but once the story got going I absolutely loved it. It is a very moving and emotional book that covers a huge range of difficult life issues and, despite all these, a very strong-willed girl who manages to pull herself through. It also raises the question of karma and fate as, at the same time as receiving a life-changing strike of good luck, Lily also finds herself with a life-changing strike of bad luck. This is a fascinating read and a book that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Summary: A love story for the 21st century