Life's Little Pleasures

Book Review: Do You Come Here Often?
posted on Sunday, January 9, 2011 at 9:52 PM | 0 cmnt/s

Title: Do You Come Here Often?
Author: Alexandra Potter
First Published: 2004
Genre: Fiction... but really just romance

Plot: DYCHO? follows Grace and her friends through life in central London as they fall in and out of love (which often happens in life, after all). The main plot, however, centers around Grace who takes a break from her fiance, Spencer, a successful, handsome lawyer, and unexpectedly bumps into her first love, Jimi.

Critique: From the very first chapter, you could sense the looming inevitability that you cannot escape from in Alexandra Potter's writing. However, that can be expected in a romance novel afterall, I suppose. Thy style in which Potter writes was curious. At moments she seems to have written like a modern Dickens with long sweeping sentences that carefully detail surroundings and environments, which should earn Potter applause. However, these moments of romantic prettiness is counteracted by the sudden plunge into simple syntax and phrases. The contruction of characters struck a chord with me also, as I found that many seemingly important character traits were developed later (and at times, right at the end) of the story which were inconsistent with what had already been constructed, and often were contradictions to previous traits.
Despite these criticisms, I believe they can be overlooked. Really, DYCHO? is just one of those books which you read as a light read, for example on the bus or plane -- it's not really going to change your life or you're not going to run around suggesting this book to everyone you meet, but it was still a worthy read to maintain your hope in fate and love. You only really need to read this book once, then but it back on the shelf, but I would certainly recommend reading Alexandra Potter's other novels which are quite similar to this one.

Rating: 3.5/5
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