Um, no.
This is the story of a lonely librarian, Peggy, who forges a friendship with a young man, Jimmy, who is tall, very tall. In fact he starts out tall when they first meet, over six feet at age eleven and eventually he grows to be over eight feet tall. The fact that he doesn't fit in with society draws her to him as emotionally she feels just as much of an outcast.
There were things to love in this book, ideas I connected with, that really hit home. Passages about love, wishing you could find love just so you could finally think about something else, not wanting to listen to love songs because love feels so out of your reach that those romantic melodies pain you to hear. The voice of Peggy had wit, and sometimes humor as dry as a bone, that I liked...at times. However, that just wasn't enough for me to fully enjoy this read.
I had issues with this book. I didn't like Peggy. As I kept reading I kept wanting to like her, expecting to like her, but I didn't. Well for one, if you read the description on the back of the book, you'd be led to believe that this was a friendship which evolved into a romance, but Peggy pretty much set her sights on Jimmy during their initial interactions when he was that tall kid. There was nothing inappropriate about her actions, but in her heart she'd decided he was her soulmate well before he had even made it to his mid-teens. It was unsettling to me how much she'd devoted her heart to him and no, not just as a friend, but as her one, true love. Had it been a man as the protagonist, with his attentions on a girl, I think that there would have been a very different reaction to this story.
I moved past those feelings once Jimmy became of age (as I mentioned there wasn't any appropriate conduct), but I never connected to the romance. Trust me, I love quirky, eccentric, off the beaten path, but some of the writing seemed to try and force this upon me.
I know this book was critically acclaimed, but I just wasn't feeling it.
2 out of 5 Iggystars
