{"id":2481,"date":"2013-03-06T01:23:39","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T06:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/?p=2481"},"modified":"2013-04-26T16:06:01","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T20:06:01","slug":"book-review-ill-take-what-she-has-by-samantha-wilde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2013\/03\/book-review-ill-take-what-she-has-by-samantha-wilde.html","title":{"rendered":"Book Review : I’ll Take What She Has by Samantha Wilde"},"content":{"rendered":"

[amazon_link id=”0385342675″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]\"I'll[\/amazon_link]Title : I\u2019ll Take What She Has
\nAuthor : Samantha Wilde
\nGenre : Women\u2019s Fiction
\nPublisher : Bantam
\nPages : 418
\nSource : Netgalley\/Publisher ARC
\nRating : 3.8\/5<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nora and Annie, both living at Dixbie, a residential school campus, are best friends. Nora Galusha is a teacher, who desperately wants to have a baby. Annie is the mother of two energetic little girls, and wants more peace and quiet. While Nora is shy, Annie\u2019s voice and opinions ring out loud. Nora admires caustic Annie\u2019s directness, because \u201cit pushed me forward in good ways\u201d. And to Annie, quiet and kind Nora is \u201cthe counterbalance to the messiness in my life\u201d. This firm friendship between two different personalities is tested when lovely and accomplished Cynthia Cypress joins the faculty at Dixbie.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll take what she has\u201d seemed kind of chick-lit-y by it\u2019s title, but it turned out to have a lot more heft. I\u2019d been expecting a case of envy and nerves, but Wilde graces her characters with deeper, humorous thoughts. \u00a0Wilde sketches two very different characters but makes them real by giving them good and bad qualities. Nora and Annie are easy to sympathize with. When Nora spoke, I appreciated her kind and forgiving nature. When Annie spoke, I understood her mixed feelings on motherhood.<\/p>\n

Truly, I believe that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Unfortunately, that hand doesn\u2019t make a dime on all that rocking, and in this cash universe, money makes for legitimacy. You can lullaby your little heart away, but no one\u2019s going to give you a new wardrobe for it. You can birth and breastfeed a hundred children, but no one\u2019s going to give you a paycheck at the end of the week. You can\u2019t trade in your eighteen sippy cups for a Florida time-share or send in your child\u2019s happy smile with your L.L. Bean order in place of a check.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cynthia Cypress is the foil to Annie\u2019s chaotic life and Nora\u2019s humdrum existence; the adult version of the \u201cpopular girl\u201d in high school. She\u2019s beautiful, friendly, rich, well traveled, accomplished and gets her way by merely showing up; the crowds at Dixbie throng in adulation. And she is married to Nora\u2019s ex-boyfriend, the handsome David. When Cynthia becomes good friends with Nora, Annie is left out in the cold, trying to sort out her feelings on friendship, motherhood and expectations in general.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll take what she has\u201d is written in the first-person, two first-person accounts actually, because we get to hear from Nora and Annie. In Wilde\u2019s unfussy, at times almost lyrical prose (I\u2019ve bookmarked quite a few of the passages in my Kindle galley) these characters come alive. The book works it\u2019s way down the rocky road of friendship; some ups, some downs and some in-betweens. We\u2019ve been down some of those life paths, so we understand, and we follow along engrossed. Wilde does an outstanding job of putting life\u2019s vagaries on paper for us to muse upon.<\/p>\n

A pleasure to read, I highly recommend \u201cI\u2019ll take what she has\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[amazon_link id=”0385342675″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][\/amazon_link]Title : I\u2019ll Take What She Has Author : Samantha Wilde Genre : Women\u2019s Fiction Publisher : Bantam Pages : 418 Source : Netgalley\/Publisher ARC Rating : 3.8\/5 Nora and Annie, both living at Dixbie, a residential school campus, are best friends. Nora Galusha is a teacher, who desperately wants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[85,71,53,92,3,69,9,89,4,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-85","category-4_star_rating","category-arc","category-bantam","category-books","category-contemporary","category-culture-and-society","category-random_house","category-review","category-women"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":2,"uagb_excerpt":"[amazon_link id=”0385342675″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][\/amazon_link]Title : I\u2019ll Take What She Has Author : Samantha Wilde Genre : Women\u2019s Fiction Publisher : Bantam Pages : 418 Source : Netgalley\/Publisher ARC Rating : 3.8\/5 Nora and Annie, both living at Dixbie, a residential school campus, are best friends. Nora Galusha is a teacher, who desperately wants…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2481"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2577,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2481\/revisions\/2577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}