Review: Return to Me, by Justina Chen Headley

Or, All Hail the Potato King!

Note: I'm about to get REAL spoilerific. I'd say don't read if you don't want spoilers, but this book is so blatantly obvious about EVERYTHING that I doubt I'd be ruining much of any of the experience for you. 

Further note: Prepare for much RANTY RANT RANTS. 

Dear Justina Chen Headley: Can I call you JCH? I feel like we've been in a sad, sad relationship, the kind where you start off all butterfly-y and glowy and just completely in love and then SUDDENLY, without any warning, one of us just goes batcrazy and flies around in a cape made of soiled underpants and tells everyone "I AM THE POTATO KING, I AM THE POTATO KING" and the relationship just digresses and melts into oblivion and the non-potato-king is wondering how on earth it got stuck with someone who'd wear other's soiled undies as a fashion choice. 

 Do you know who is the Potato King in this relationship, JCH? 

You are. You're the Potato King.

What the heck happened to us, Potato King? Your debut book, North of Beautiful , was so exquisite, so vivid, so gorgeously rendered, I couldn't help but be in awe of it. I gasped aloud while reading, so stunned was I by your power to convey emotions and family dynamics in a real, raw, true way. So imagine my thrill of anticipation when I discovered Return to Me was about to come out. I'd waited years for this! Another book by the great JCH! Another rich family drama! A coming-of-age story! But no, all my hopes were dashed. Our romance was not to be. You just had to go and throw on your soiled-undie-cape and declare yourself the Potato King. 

What even is this book? This is the most disappointed I've been by an author in quite some time. This book is trite. The characters unlikeable, their motivations completely spelled out for us. Everything is laid out to the point where there's barely any actual conflict. The resolution is so nice, so easy, it leaves the territory of saccharine and ventures into freaking Candy Land. Every single thought, dynamic, feeling, and person is EXPLAINED to us, via Reb's EXTRAORDINARY LEVEL OF INSIGHT into the people around her.

It's like if God wrote a book about his people on earth and instead of SHOWING what they did, instead of carrying the reader along the journey, God was just like, "Yo, Ima tell you what's up inside these people's heads yo, just cause I know what's up inside they heads and that way this is just way easier than me having to like, write good books, yo." 

I mean, this feels like it couldn't possibly be from the same author of North of Beautiful because that was a GOOD BOOK. This is NOT. This is a Potato King. 

Random points pulled out to display major irritation: 

* Literally days after her dad's affair and subsequent leaving of her mother, Reb's all waxing philosophical like, "Maybe this is the best for both my parents, maybe they're free to find their true soulmates, la la la" but let me just state that NO HUMAN BEING FEELS THAT WAY literally days after her father reveals he's been spending 5+ figures on romantic getaways to Paris for months now, living a double life, jetting off on "business trips" that were really with his mistress, whom he keeps in an apartment in Manhattan, and that OOPS HE SPENT ALL YOUR COLLEGE MONEY ON THIS HO TOO, and he ruthlessly broke your mother's heart, and you just, you are like, three days later being all "dis is for da best mmkay yuhs".... 

* The architect stuff was skull-numbingly terrible. So. GODFORSAKENLY BORING. 

* Reb spends the first 25 pages telling us how annoying her mom is and how she can't stand her, and the next 300 pages telling us how she got her mom all wrong and her mom's really not that bad and like yeah. I cannot relay to you how annoying this was. Probably more annoying than the most annoying girl you can think of. Think of her. Now, yes, even more annoying than that. 

* She tells her little brother he's a good man, frequently. HE IS TEN. 

* "Jackson, my Jackson. Jackson u is perfect. Jackson I bet u is gonna cheat on me cause my daddeh cheated on my mommy. Jackson I is going to break up with u then never answer u texts/calls and then come running back after a whole summer of ignoring u and expect u to jump back in my arms even after i treat u like dirt. u is dirt, Jackson. u is my dirt." = the whole romantic relationship. 

* Everyone in this book is just. SO. no. You just, don't even believe them for a second. It's like every single person is a Manic Pixie Dream Person.

* Her dad seriously moves her mom and family ALL THE WAY ACROSS COUNTRY, from Seattle to New Jersey, and THEN, THEN he tells the mom he's having an affair and he's leaving her and that he never should have moved her out there. He'd been having the affair for MONTHS. No person would DO that. 

* The ending is so barfingly perfect and I can't even.

* Let's go ahead and call this a Manic Pixie Dream BOOK.

 Listen, Potato King, you can go around running and screaming all you want. I'm breaking up with you.

- Fire