If You Only Knew by Kristan Higgins

Narrated by Xe Sands and Amy Rubinate

Kristan Higgins took a little step outside of her usual humorous small-town romance with If You Only Knew, which is more of a women’s fiction genre book than romance. The story is written from the points of view (POV) of 2 adult sisters, Jenny – a successful wedding dress designer whose ex-husband and his new wife are keeping Jenny involved in their lives, and Rachel – a stay-at-home mom of triplet toddlers, whose perfect marriage crumbles after she learns her husband is having an affair. It’s a very true-life-story kind of tale, with touches of Higgins’ trademark humor woven into the details of their lives.

Jenny’s marriage to Owen ended just over a year before the story starts, when he decided he wasn’t happy. Shortly after the divorce, he met and married his soulmate, and for reasons I never quite grasped, the lovebirds kept Jenny as a major part of their life, including having her at their baby shower. This is really a blow for Jenny since Owen had told her he didn’t want children, but somehow – again, this is totally outside my experience – Jenny talks to them almost daily by phone and has dinner with them weekly, in the apartment she had shared with Owen when they were married. They didn’t even move the kitchen equipment; she’s as comfortable there as if she still lived there. But she does finally realize how toxic this relationship is for her (aided by her assistant Andreas, bless him) and so she moves back to her hometown which is commute-length distance from Manhattan, and opens a bridal shop there.

Jenny’s sister Rachel never left their hometown, and lives there in her perfect life, doing Mommy-and-Me activities and pricey pre-school with a gaggle of super-moms, many of them competing to be the most perfect mothers ever. She has her dream, the life her mother had before her father died many years before: a loving, faithful husband and father, and her beautiful daughters. The facade crumbles when she sees a text (aka Sext) photo on his phone, and discovers he’s been cheating on her with a co-worker. The three beautiful toddlers, whom she loves with all her heart, are often little toddler-terrorists – in spite of being triplets, they are each at different levels of speech and potty training and such. This is where Higgins’ prose shines, describing trying to take one toddler to the potty, terrified to leave the other two out of sight. In another scene, she decides to treat them all to ice cream for dinner out, and, as she describes it, they all explode in the car – one puking starts a chain of bad. (I think you might have to read it to really get the humor!)

It’s interesting to hear the story come from 2 points of view. Jenny has carried a secret she knew about her father for the 22 years since his death. It colors her narrative, so that her descriptions of their mother’s behavior contrast with those from Rachel’s POV. They both try to manage their relationships with their mother, who is critical and competitive, and a complete wet blanket pretty much all the time. Although Jenny is the younger sister, she’s also more outgoing and after Rachel reveals Adam’s affair, Jenny is more the care-giver type, stepping in to baby-sit, shielding Rachel from their mother, and being the Big, Protective Sister. Higgins’ characters are all fully fleshed out – no cardboard, 2-dimensional characters here, and you feel the struggle Rachel goes through, trying to come to terms with her situation, doing her best to get past the feelings of betrayal and the loss of trust. There were many times I felt myself cringe – adultery can be a hot button for some – and I felt the pain, and the hopefulness and the despair both Rachel and Jenny experienced.

There is a touch of romance in the book – Jenny meets a man who spends most of his time reminding her he is not relationship material, even while their friendship grows and develops. But if you need a hero and heroine who spend a lot of time together, with a focus on their relationship, this book is not for you. Even with the “optimistic ending”, I wouldn’t call their relationship “emotionally satisfying”, and it was not the central theme of the story.

Use of two female narrators seemed an odd choice before hearing the book, but it worked very well to have each of the sisters be read by a different person in first person. Xe Sands voices Jenny, the more optimistic (albeit often foolishly) sister, who often fantasizes fully-formed daydreams on the spot, seeing a man walking a dog who suddenly is proposing to her, then they travel the world before having 3 perfect children, all before the man actually just walks past. Sands is one of my go-to narrators for contemporary romance, with perfect, natural pacing and delivery. She gives each character voice and personality, and is very easy to listen to. Amy Rubinate’s style is a little different, and while she has narrated many of Higgins’ works before, I find it difficult to listen to her. Her pacing is fine and she does have a wide range of pitch with which to differentiate characters. However, her delivery has seemed flat and without humor, and my complaints have usually been about her inability to bring Higgins’ humorous style to life. In this case, her voice made a good counterpoint to Xe’s Jenny – Rachel is falling apart, and in spite of her trying to maintain her happiness, she’s increasingly bitter and depressed. When Rachel develops a backbone, Amy shows this in her voice, making Rachel sound a little more belligerent and sharp. Overall, it worked to feature these two voices for the sisters.

It was a totally engrossing and emotional story, and I felt for both women as they faced life-changing challenges, even though I found myself getting angry and frustrated with them as well. Yes, I experienced myself talking out loud to both characters, which I take as a sign of being fully engaged in the story.

Melinda

Narration: Xe Sands A; Amy Rubinate B

Book Content: B

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in - you could almost play it out loud actually, very tame

Violence Rating: None

Genre: Women's fiction

Publisher: Recorded Books