Book Review: Belong to Me, by Marisa De Los Santos

When I pick up a book in the store and determine whether I want to buy it , I put it through the first-page test. What I mean by this is if a title interests me, I will flip open to the first page and read it as if I am going to read the rest of the book. If I really am pulled in and want to find out what happens then I buy it, if I could care less what happens I put it down. With Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos, I wanted to know more after the first page, so therefore I made my journey home with it and began reading.

By about page 60, it dawned on me, what happens if the first page does pull you in, but nothing is good after the first page? That is the problem with this book. I kept waiting for it to take off, I kept waiting for the moment where all of the set-ups in the story would make a point. The story about Claudia who moves to the suburbs from the city and meets the likes of stuck up Piper, flying free Lake and poor Elizabeth was one long drawn out cliche after another. It was like watching an episode of Desparate Housewives without any of the sharpness (if there is any) of Wisteria Lane. Even after I decided this "Calgon take me away" book was not for me, I had already devoted myself to reading it so I wanted to just get through it. Therein lies the problem, I just wanted to get through it. I found myself longing to get to the next book, if there was a fast forward button on this book I would have pushed it a long time ago. I really wanted to like this book and really wanted to like the main character of Claudia, but it just wasn't there.

The reason why I found it so hard to feel really anything for these characters is that the volley kept getting set up in description but there was no spike to drive it home. You kept "getting to know" these characters and what they were feeling, there were always hints of pulling back the curtain to reveal who they really were, in fact more than hints, but you never quite were told who they were, you kept being told why there were the way they were. I am all about setup, but the whole point about setup is to explain the beginning of the story to come, the problem was, the setup, at least in my opinion, was the story and I can't sit on the runway of a book waiting to take off only to find out we never will.

I have read other reviews of this book, glowing reviews, one stating it is the best book they have read this year so far. I can't say that, but what I can say is there is a reason why there are many different types of titles for many different people, obviously, I mean this was a New York Times Bestseller, but ultimately Belong to Me just shouldn't have been belonged to me at all.