REVIEW: This Was Not the Plan by Cristina Alger

 2/5 stars

A lot happens in this novel, but it feels like the author barely scratches the surface to reach any depth.

Within a couple of years, Charlie lost his wife and his job, and he also lost his happiness somewhere along the way. A series of bad decisions leads him to allow new people into his life and reconnect with others, including his estranged father. Charlie must learn to relax and determine what’s important to him before he loses everything he has left. It sounds like a good story that will tug at the heartstrings, right? The story is good, but the delivery isn’t great.

Charlie struggles with working his life away as a lawyer in the financial industry, but his situations move quickly from being relatable issues to rich-people problems. There isn’t enough humor, drama, or heart in the novel to set it apart as anything else. Every plot point touches on tender, real-life stuff, but these scenarios and the characters involved seem underdeveloped in a way that feels like the author is just trying to check off boxes.

The book picked up and slowed down with reliabilty. Not one character is particularly interesting or lovable – except for sweet, 5-year-old Caleb. Charlie’s son is quite an individual and I would have loved to know more about him. The scenes between Caleb and his father are some of the best moments in the book. Second to those are the very few chapters that flash back to interactions between Charlie and his late wife. Descriptions of him proposing to her and, later, of her announcing her pregnancy were excellent. But those moments were few and far between for me. I appreciated the overall message that life is short and time with our loved ones is shorter, and the book ended well. I just wish the journey to the end had been more enjoyable.

Release Date: February 2, 2016 (Touchstone)