On Second Thought by Kristan Higgins

 

When I was young, I really enjoyed Sarah Dessen books. Even though they were pretty trashy, something about the set-up-- family drama, family secrets, incredibly whiny but realistically angsty heroines-- really appealed to me. Maybe it was because she actually wrote flawed heroines whose lives weren't perfect. Maybe it was because she was super good at showing the cracks within a family. Either way, these stories were Teen Me's crack and I devoured them.

Kristan Higgins's ON SECOND THOUGHT is kind of like an adult version of a Sarah Dessen book. It's about two sisters, with like a ten-year gap between them. Kate, the older sister, is verging on forty but head-over-heels in love with her very East Coast Rich husband, Nathan, and his perfect family. She can't believe how lucky she is, which is why it feels like such a tragedy when all that luck is whirled away in a single instant when her husband falls while bringing her wine at a party and ends up dying from hitting his head on a counter.

Ainsley, the younger sister, is kind of like the living embodiment of the manic pixie dreamgirl. She devotes all her time to making her boyfriend, Eric, happy, who she nursed through cancer and helped find a platform for his blog. And how does he thank her for all this? By breaking up with her and then appropriating some of her sister Kate's grief in order to write a viral blog post about how she is a corpse from his past life that he must cut loose. And yes, he actually uses the word "corpse." What a fucking shill.

I've been reading this very slowly for the past week. I liked the build-up of the beginning because even though the back jacket tells you what happens, you kind of want to see how the shit is going to go down. I think it gets a little slow in the end once all the bits and pieces start getting tied up. Each sister ends up finding romance with a new guy while also navigating her big life changes. Daniel felt like a pretty stock 2000s fuckboy redeemed romance hero, but OMG I loved Jonathan. He was so awkward and cute (and possibly neurodivergent?) and I just loved him so much. He is everything.

So overall, this book was pretty good. I'm trying to go through my paperback collection and figure out what I want to keep and what I want to donate/pass along, and even though this wasn't a keeper for me, it ended up being really cute and fun and satisfying. It's just way too long at 500 pages.

3 to 3.5 out of 5 stars