Reviews for Belong to Me

The average rating for Belong to Me based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-05-01 00:00:00 Sungsoo Shin I'm basically copying this from what I wrote on my blog, which is why it's so lengthy: I thought this was positively delicious. And I'm not just saying that because I got the book for free, either. I'm not afraid to trash free stuff, you know (Hi there, Old Navy Jeans! You still suck!). I'm saying it because it really is lovely. I first encountered Ms. de los Santos's writing when I picked up her book Love Walked In off one of those tables at the megabookstore with the "buy 2 paperbacks for the price of 3″ signs or whatever. I don't think I've ever hidden the fact that I am a sucker for an attractive book cover despite all proverbial advice not to choose one's reading material (or anything else) that way, and the cover for Love Walked In spoke to me. Anyway, I ended up loving the book and was so pleased to learn that de los Santos was building further upon those characters with Belong to Me. Reading Belong to Me is like walking around with one of those geared-towards-children "READING IS FUN!" posters pinned to your back. That's what it is: pure, unadulterated fun. It is a 390-page reminder of why I love to read. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me roll my eyes at the questionable realism, it made me snort, it made me nod my head in agreement, and it made me want to jump into the pages and hang out with most of the characters and then it made me want to jump out of the pages and hang out with the author. I mean, sure, we read books sometimes because we want to be moved at our very core or because we want to feel intellectual or because we want to learn or because it won a Pulitzer or a Booker Prize or whatever. But sometimes we read to be entertained. Belong to Me does just that - and the best thing about it is that it does that without being too embarrassingly vapid or chick lit-ish. It doesn't hurt that I want to be friends with Cornelia Brown, the main character, either, despite the fact that she describes herself as weighing about the same as "your average sack of groceries" (I tend to resent thin people). I can get past that - easily - with her description of her first suburban dinner party: "It was a pastel-colored prairie of linen pants and sleeveless tops, stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see. I stood on its edge and felt myself in my dress turning - subtly, like an early-autumn leaf or a days-old open bottle of red wine - from easy and elegant to overreaching and tarty." And then, later, as she so appropriately describes the way I feel at most events involving my in-laws: "'I'm good at dinner parties!' I wanted to shout. 'Dinner parties are my natural habitat! I am appropriately dressed and good at dinner parties!'" Cornelia, honey, you're not alone. I don't want to ruin the book for you by telling you much more, since I suck at keeping secrets and will inevitably overshare too much of the plot, but you should definitely read this. Set down War & Peace for a little bit and settle in for some scrumptiosity (a word, I promise!). And Ms. de los Santos, if you're anything like Cornelia or Clare or any of your other characters (hell, even Piper-like-viper-but-with-a-p) and you're up for a chat over too much wine, I'd be honored to join you. I can't wait for your next book to come out.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-02-22 00:00:00 Brad Adtea [ everything is tied up way too neatly in the end. I mean come on. It's one thing to say "everyone lived happily ever after" and another thing entirely to show them all romping around together at a picnic loving each other in spite of all logic. (hide spoiler)]