I'd Give Anything

March 2, 2020
De los Santos’s heartfelt latest (after I'll Be Your Blue Sky) illustrates how tragedy can be overcome by love, honesty, and forgiveness. In 1997, the bonds of teenage Virginia “Zinny” Beale’s friend group are tested after the death of Zinny’s boyfriend Gray’s father, a firefighter who died putting out a fire. Soon after, Zinny overhears a fight between her mother, Adela, and Zinny’s beloved older brother, Trevor. Trevor loathes Adela, a wealthy, steely matron, and after his fights with Adela persist, he leaves for college and never returns. The tension at home causes Zinny to withdraw from her friends, including Gray. Twenty years later, Zinny is Ginny Beale McCue, married to the bland, dependable Harris. After Harris loses his job due to a scandal resulting from affectionate emails he sent to an 18-year-old intern, Ginny turns her attention to their precocious 15-year-old daughter, Avery. As Avery investigates her father’s behaviors, Ginny looks back on her regrets about losing cherished teenaged friendships and her decision to settle with Harris. Thoughtful musings, engaging dialogue, and ironic wit (“it has adult bone structure,” Harris says, defensively describing his intern’s face) add to the drama. De los Santos’s seemingly light tale is full of surprises. (May)Correction: An earlier version of this review listed the incorrect title for the author's previous book.

March 1, 2020
In de los Santos' (I'll Be Your Blue Sky, 2018, etc.) new melodrama, a woman's perfect domestic life unravels when her husband becomes embroiled in a scandal and a terrible secret she has been keeping since high school threatens her relationship with her teenage daughter and her closest friends. On an idyllic evening in June 1997, Zinny is a deliriously happy, free-spirited high schooler partying at the local quarry with her tight gang--Kirsten, CJ, and Gray ("The fantastic four. The forever four")--along with her beloved brother, Trevor. Twenty years later, bold and brave Zinny has become sedate, suburban Ginny shopping for pricey heirloom tomatoes in a gourmet market when she learns of her husband Harris' firing from his VP job at a pharmaceutical company, ostensibly for offering insider information to hush up his unseemly obsession with an 18-year-old intern named Cressida. From those opening chapters, the novel toggles between the diary kept by Zinny, which recounts how she withdrew from her friends after she discovered who set the school fire that killed Gray's firefighter father, and Ginny's first-person narrative of her attempts to protect her daughter, Avery, from Harris' disgrace. While there are touching moments, especially in regard to Gray's coming out as gay and the cruel bullying he receives, the protagonists are so flatly drawn that it's hard to feel much empathy for their dilemmas; for example, eventual love interest Daniel, whom Ginny meets in the dog park, is introduced as a "very tall, thin man." Obvious plot contrivances, clunky, cringeworthy descriptions (Gray's laugh is described as "a cross between a guitar strum and hot toast with butter and honey"), and writerly dialogue that no human would ever speak also diminish the pleasure. A flawed tale but the author's devoted fans will devour it.

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April 1, 2020

Teenager Ginny Beale was wildly creative, adventurous, and incredibly loyal to her brother and her three best friends, but that all changed the night she learned a devastating secret about the fire that killed her best friend's dad. Twenty years later, Ginny discovers another life-changing secret: her nice, dependable husband has been fired from his job as the result of a dalliance with an 18-year-old intern who is only three years older than their daughter, Avery. Ginny immediately takes action to spin the story and try to protect her daughter, who already has issues with anxiety and insomnia. In the midst of this crisis, Ginny also has to grapple with her dying mother, another relationship fraught with issues. Then when Avery finds her mom's teenage journal from 1997, Ginny has to face her deepest secret again and finally confront the past. VERDICT Alternating viewpoints, from the journal entries to Ginny and Avery in the present, give the story more perspective and slowly build the tension as the truth of what really happened 20 years ago is revealed. Smart prose and sharply drawn characters set this domestic drama apart in best-selling de los Santos's latest (after I'll Be Your Blue Sky). [See Prepub Alert, 11/11/19.]--Melissa DeWild, Comstock Park, MI

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2020
The latest from de los Santos (I'll Be Your Blue Sky, 2018) opens in the summer of 1997 with a diary entry from teenaged Ginny Beale musing on the moments when the person you are and the person you want to be are the same: confident, daring, and surrounded by friends you love. But readers find adult Ginny no longer the self-assured girl of her youth, with a daughter of her own, a husband in hot water at work, and a terminally ill mother. Alternating between Ginny's diary and present-day Ginny, and eventually, Ginny's daughter, Avery, secrets from the past reveal themselves to jeopardize the orderly life Ginny has built and force her to question choices she made. Ginny's portrayal as a woman who desperately wishes she had done something differently is universal and familiar. As fans know, de los Santos uses exquisitely luxurious, poetic writing to tell her characters' stories. She knows exactly where she's going and how and when to get there. The rhythm of the prose will more than please those who love the thoughtful, precise language of Anne Tyler and Joshilyn Jackson.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)