Book Review - I Take You by Eliza Kennedy

Amazon UK

Title: I Take You

Author: Eliza Kennedy

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: Vintage Publishing

Publication Date: 4th June 2015

Rating: 5 Stars

’I’m getting married.
He’s perfect!
It’s a disaster.

Meet Lily Wilder – New Yorker, lawyer and the luckiest woman in the world. She has a dream job, friends who adore her, a family full of charismatic and loving women, and a total catch of a fiancé. 

Also? She has no business getting married.

Lily’s fiancé Will is a brilliant, handsome archaeologist. Lily is sassy, impulsive, fond of a good drink (or five) and completely incapable of being faithful to just one man. Lily likes Will, but does she love him? Will loves Lily, but does he really know her? As the wedding approaches, Lily’s nights – and mornings, and afternoons – of booze, laughter and questionable decisions become a growing reminder that the happiest day of her life might turn out to be her worst mistake yet. 

Joyous and ribald, I Take You is a show-stopping debut, introducing a fabulously self-assured protagonist whose choices raise fresh questions about gender politics, monogamy and the true meaning of fidelity.

I absolutely loved this book, it was an easy to read, funny book, with a main character who should know better. 

Lily Wilder is a trainee lawyer, who is about to have a week's vacation from work, in order to fly to Key West to get married to her perfect fiancee Will. Lily has a fabulously unique family dynamic, including many step moms who all get along, and her philandering father. Will's parents are far more uptight.  Lily has a general love of alcohol and sex, but not a great ability to be faithful. 

Lily is continually riddled with doubt, whether she should or shouldn't marry Will. On paper he is the perfect guy but she, especially with her doubtful role-models, has no idea if she is marriage material. Her family and friends seem to doubt it at times too. 

Very early on into the book, there are secrets in Lily's past that are hinted at. I had been guessing one secret that I was so sure about, only for that not to be the case at all, and that the revelations were far more interesting and shocking than I was expecting. 

Lily is also very committed to her job, to the extent she agrees to do some work while she is on her vacation, leading up to her wedding. There is a fair bit of legal jargon used in the book, which I found a bit confusing, but I believe the sort of case she was working on, is similar to the one in Erin Brokovitch, and using that comparison in my mind, it made some more sense.  And the final court room scenes, had a touch of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde about them, at least to me it felt like Lily was channelling Elle!

There is a fair amount of discussion between Lily and her friends, as to perceptions of women that sleep around, compared to men. I feel that Eliza Kennedy was  trying to challenge various stereotypes and social conformities here, just by making Lily, a sex maniac (my words not hers!). 

I Take You had an new and entertaining voice to it, and I found the whole story to be very entertaining. It was high paced, and you barely had a chance to stop and take in what they were up to, before moving onto the next scene. The whole story takes place over the 7 day period leading up to Lily's wedding, and if I did even half those things in a week, I would be exhausted!

I Take You is a fabulous debut novel, by an upcoming author, who I would definitely like to see more from. I can't wait to see what Eliza Kennedy can come up with next. 

Thanks so much to Vintage Publishing and Netgalley for this review copy. This was my honest opinion.