It Had To Be You

It Had To Be You
by Jill Shalvis
Rating: 4 of 5 stars

My Review:
This was a cute, zany story. It was a little hard to get in to some of the zaniness because I never had a solid chunk of reading time. I felt like I'd always start up again right as there was some crazy situation happening that should totally have been funny but I had to remind myself what happened just before in order to get it and then it wasn't as funny anymore. I'm sure if I sat reading for a few hours, there would have been some good laughs, but in small chunks this book gave me some chuckles and some eye rolls.

I was mildly shocked by some of the sexist lines in the book though. You expect an alpha hero from Jill Shalvis, but there were some odd remarks like "…he should have remembered that angry women were never reasonable." I've expected lines like that from 80's romance novels but that stereotyping is disappointing to see today. I'm sure it was meant to be funny and maybe there were some negative stereotypes for men in the book too, but it took Luke as a character down a few pegs for me when I read something like that.

Ali and Luke are both strong characters who are used to helping everyone else and slogging through life however they need to in order to get what they want. They were a believable pair, in a zany sort of way. I wanted them to solve their problems and work their life out together.

This is a great beach read, or anytime really that you have a day to spend with some fun characters. If I had to compare this to something, I'd say it's most like a good Meg Ryan movie. You know it's going to end well, but it's comforting to see everyone get there together and leaves a smile on your face in the end.