Book review: What It Takes by Terry Tyler

*Copy provided by author in exchange for an honest review*

Karen is the youngest of three sisters. While Ava and Saskia inherited their mother’s former model body, Karen is the smart type, like their father. But she grew up with the feeling that she wasn’t good enough. She feels she’s not beautiful enough like her sisters, not good enough to be her dad’s favorite, not  good enough to be a Spice Girl, either.

However, everything changes for her when she meets Danny. He loves her just the way she is, and everyone in her family likes him. But, suddenly, Karen decides she is better without him. Danny is not pleased with her decision and starts fighting for her love. He stars sending her flowers, phones her all the time…you know, the usual stalking, so she calles police. Danny is ‘forced’ to start a new life, but not long after it’s Karen who’s second guessing her reasons for breaking up. Drama follows and quite an interesting turn of events in both their lives.

The whole story was told from different points of view. There is Karen, Ava and Saskia, Danny and Sam. Every event is told from their different perspective and I really loved this, because it made me get to know all of the characters better. Speaking of characters, I admit I didn’t like Karen much. She is always complaining, and her self- esteem is so low, she thinks everyone is better than her. I didn’t have the feeling this makes her a bad person, just not a very strong one. She makes some very poor choices and ends up playing victim all the time. As much as I wanted to sympathize with her, I just couldn’t understand her and felt she’s too weak of a person.

As for the Danny and Karen’s love story, it reminded me of the Russian story of Evgeny Onegin, just placed in modern time frame. None of the characters is good nor bad, just human, and all human beings  make mistakes and start all over again.

However, I confess, the ending left me speechless. I totally couldn’t predict it and it left me quite surprised. My jaw literally dropped I was that taken by surprise. This book, in my opinion is an interesting contemporary romance/women’s fiction combination with few thriller elements, and is very difficult for me to place it in one genre.

My rating: 3/5

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