I tried hard to separate the writing in Someday, Someday Maybe from my intense, decades-long crush on Lauren Graham. It wasn’t really hard to do, since I pretty much equate Lauren Graham with Lorelei Gilmore in my head (and maybe a little of her character in Bad Santa…) and the heroine of Someday, Someday Maybe doesn’t bear much resemblance to Lorelei.
“Once again, I’ve been thwarted by the massive difference between my vision of the successful me and the me I’m currently stuck with.” Good lord, girl, we all understand that.
Set in New York in 1995, the novel stars Franny Banks, who has six months left of the three years she gave herself to “make it” as an actress. Things aren’t going well — she’s rehearsing for a showcase but hasn’t had much work up to this point (outside of waitressing, that is). She has a maybe-boyfriend left over from college, who lives in Chicago, and a major crush on a guy in her acting class. She lives with her best friend (who I wish had been featured more in the novel–I liked her) and a struggling writer.
It’s a cute novel, slightly predictable (especially the love triangle, although I like how it was handled), but fun to read. It was very sweet–Franny is self-deprecating and clever, her friends are varied and very likable, the bad boyfriend is just bad enough and the boy she ends up with is darling. It would make an excellent romcom to watch on a Thursday night, which I totally mean as a compliment.
Yeah, I had a hard time deciding if I really liked this book or if my adoration for Lauren Graham was just spilling over. It probably didn’t help that I listened to the audiobook read by Graham. I did ultimately decide it was a well written, if very fluffy book. But well written fluff is actually kind of hard to find, so kudos to Lauren Graham for achieving that. And for showing the struggles curly haired girls in the 90s faced. It was not a good time for us.
Pretty much your entire comment is exactly how I feel.