Abandoned by Booklikes

Eh. I am pretty much reading anything that costs me zero dollars, so I thought I try one of the Amazon Original Stories. I have read Taylor Jenkins Reid before so I thought this be at least a good read, even though it's a short story. I liked the idea of writing letters back and forth, but though two of the characters were beyond boring, and hated the last letter that was sent. It pretty much makes one of the characters totally crap and actually being someone that she would have despised earlier. 

For this short story to make any sense, I will say up front this takes place in the late 1970s. Even though I know that phones exist, let's pretend that two strangers would mail each other and the mail would be able to get to the other person super fast. It drove me nuts sometimes one of them would mention getting together on a certain date and I would like at the date on the letter and wonder how they got it so soon in order to meet. 

Reid follows two characters, Carrie and David whose spouses are having an affair. Carrie, because she wants to spread misery (yeah I said it, fight me) writes David a letter and tells him that his wife is sleeping with her husband. I swear this reminds me of a movie that I saw and loathed, with Harrison Ford called Random Hearts. Anyway, Carrie doesn't get a response for several months and writes again and then eventually David starts writing her back.

The entire book is two people wondering what they did wrong (understandable) and putting themselves down and then meeting up eventually and pretty much gushing about the other one (that got old fast). And neither one of them do anything proactive about the cheating spouses. Instead we get to read the letters Carrie steals and sends back to David to read. If anything I was more interested in the cheating spouses. They actually had a personality. 

The book ends on a sour note (for me at least).