I thoroughly enjoyed Emily Giffin's debut novel, Something Borrowed. With that book I fell in love with the main character, Rachel White, and her romance with Dex Thaler, whose fiance, Darcy Rhone, was Rachel's best friend. That book was written from Rachel's perspective. When I saw that Giffin had written Something Blue from Darcy's perspective, I had to pick it up. I did not like Darcy in the first book, but I was intrigued by the idea of hearing her account of the events of the first book and her relationship with Rachel, while getting a continuation of the story.

Warning/Potential Spoiler Alert
While you can certainly follow along with this book without reading Something Borrowed first, I highly recommend you read that book before this one. It will not only heighten the experience of the first book to not know how it ends, it will give you a lot of "aha" moments while reading this book. It is impossible for me to review Something Blue without spoiling the end of the first book, so if you have not yet read Something Borrowed but plan to do so, DO NOT continue reading this review!

The Story
This book starts off at the climax of Something Borrowed, yet is told from the perspective of Darcy Rhone, who is the "scorned party," so to speak, from the first book. When Darcy goes to tell her best friend Rachel that she has called off her wedding to Dex because she has fallen in love with his groomsman, Marcus, she finds Dex in Rachel's closet, wearing only his boxers. Although she thinks this is the first time Dex and Rachel have been together and she herself is pregnant with Marcus's child, Darcy feels that she is the only one who has been betrayed.

Her disbelief that anyone as plain as Rachel could have betrayed her and be preferred over her by someone as handsome as Dex consumes Darcy's life. She is too stubborn to try to contact Rachel, but is so obsessed with their situation that she drives away many of the people in her life. Well, to be fair, it is not just her obsession that drives them away. It probably also has something to do with her selfishness and the hypocrisy of her complaining about them when she got knocked up by Marcus, a guy who has nothing to offer in her high-society world except for good sex.

Once everyone close to her (including Marcus) has vanished from her life, Darcy decides to stay with Ethan, her childhood friend who lives in England. It is there that she learns what is important in life and changes her ways. I would normally put a spoiler alert before saying that, but the book jacket basically tells you that's where the story is headed, and it becomes painfully obvious that the makeover has to happen because Darcy needs something to redeem herself as a character. She is one of the most shallow and selfish characters I have ever read a book about.

My Take
I enjoyed the first 150 pages of this 338 page book, mainly because it had more to do with the characters I was familiar with from Something Borrowed and hinted at what was happening in Rachel and Dex's relationship. I expected to like the stuff in England, mainly because Ethan was one of my favorite characters from the first book. To be fair, Ethan remained a wonderful character in this book and I enjoyed his scenes, but for the most part I got bored with the second half of the book. I also found Darcy's metamorphosis into a caring, responsible, unselfish person to be sudden and far-fetched. Of course, as a chick lit book, there is a love interest, but it also felt rushed and unnatural to me.

Emily Giffin is an incredibly talented writer and what impressed me the most about this book was her ability to tell a story she had already told from another character's perspective and really give this character a different voice. I think this was partially helped by her decision to change the storytelling style a bit. Something Borrowed was narrated by Rachel in the first person present tense, while Something Blue is narrated by Darcy in the first person past tense, which gives a different type of flow to the story. Darcy also happens to be a much more self-centered person, so you can tell in her version of events how oblivious she can be to what people really think.

All in all, I like the concept behind these two books, and would recommend reading both of them, but I definitely did not like this one as much as the first. The main reason for this is that I disliked the main character and found her transformation to greatness to be unrealistic.

Other books by Emily Giffin:
Something Borrowed
Baby Proof

Recommended: Yes