As they like to say in the south, “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

The Idea of Love by Patti Callahan Henry

About this book: (from the publisher) Ella’s life has been completely upended. She’s young, beautiful, and deeply in love–until her husband dies in a tragic sailing accident while trying save her. Or so she’ll have everyone believe. Screenwriter Hunter needs a hit, but crippling writers’ block and a serious lack of motivation are getting him nowhere. He’s on the look-out for a love story. It doesn’t matter who it belongs to.

When Hunter and Ella meet in Watersend, South Carolina it feels like the perfect match, something close to fate. In Ella, Hunter finds the perfect love story, full of longing and sacrifice. It’s the stuff of epic films. In Hunter, Ella finds possibility. It’s an opportunity to live out a fantasy – the life she wishes she had because hers is too painful. And more real. Besides. what’s a little white lie between strangers?

But one lie leads to another, and soon Hunter and Ella find themselves caught in a web of deceit. As they try to untangle their lies and reclaim their own lives, they feel something stronger is keeping them together. And so they wonder: can two people come together for all the wrong reasons and still make it right?

About the author: Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times-bestselling author whose novels include And Then I Found You, Between the Tides, and Driftwood Summer. Patti lives with her husband and three children in Mountain Brook, Alabama, where she is working on her next novel.

Genre: Fiction/Contemporary

First impressions: The cover suggests a breezy summertime read, so naturally I was interested. First pages took off rather slowly, I felt, but the story concept kept me going–for a while, anyway.

If this book were a movie, I would rate it: PG-13 for language, mature themes (adultery, etc.)

Reminds me of… Kristin Hannah

Will especially appeal to…women who enjoy contemporary fiction with lots of relationship drama and hints of the south.

This story matters because…to paraphrase Mimi, we can’t wait for someone else to give permission to chase our own life.

My take: Novelists set themselves a particular challenge when they begin a story with two unsympathetic protagonists. On the plus side, this gives the characters plenty of scope for growth. The downside, however, is that it makes it hard for readers to want to stick with characters who are rather unlikable. Harder still for readers to care what happens to them.

Unfortunately, I found this to be the case here. Both characters begin their interaction by feeding the other a lie. I was initially okay with this as the basis for the story, but now I realize that my “permission” was predicated on being able to otherwise like them. But I found Blake so unappealing in the first chapters that I didn’t want to hang around him–not even in the pages of a book. He consistently drank too much, exhibited selfish motives at every turn, and was an inattentive dad as well as a cheating husband (and lover). Ella was somewhat more sympathetic as the jilted wife, but even she engaged in behaviors that lost my sympathy. Her actions on the night of the Debacle, for instance.

This lack was eventually helped, a little, by the introduction of Mimi, a fairly appealing secondary character. But for me, it fell short. While I thought the story’s premise was promising (which was what made me want to read it in the first place), it wasn’t enough to win me over. In the end, I couldn’t believe that these two characters could create anything permanent based on the foundation they were building on. Even when the truth comes out–as it almost always must–what remained felt as unsubstantial as a house of cards.

I have enjoyed a Patti Callahan Henry novel or two–most notably, The Stories We Tell–and will hope for better the next time around.

[Tweet “Patti Callahan Henry’s #IdeaOfLove. Lots of relationship drama & hints of the south.”]

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for providing me a free copy to review. All opinions are mine.

After words: What breezy summer titles on are your reading list?