“Today Will Be Different” Review

A few years back I read and loved Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette. It was hilarious, heart-warming, fun, and really a lovely family story. I was excited about her next book, Today Will Be Different, but ultimately it just didn’t meet my high expectations.

A genius novel from the author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, about a day in the life of Eleanor Flood, forced to abandon her small ambitions when she awakes to a strange, new future unfolding.
Eleanor knows she's a mess. But today, she will tackle the little things. She will shower and get dressed. She will have her poetry and yoga lessons after dropping off her son, Timby. She won't swear. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. But before she can put her modest plan into action-life happens. Today, it turns out, is the day Timby has decided to fake sick to weasel his way into his mother's company. It's also the day Joe has chosen to tell his office-but not Eleanor-that he's on vacation. Just when it seems like things can't go more awry, an encounter with a former colleague produces a graphic memoir whose dramatic tale threatens to reveal a buried family secret.
TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENT is a hilarious, heart-filled story about reinvention, sisterhood, and how sometimes it takes facing up to our former selves to truly begin living.

a family of three, Seattle life, and a spiritual mystery

What I liked:

• The book has a similar format as Where’d You Go, Bernadette. It focuses on a family unit and a mystery that needs to be solved within the family. In this book we’re trying to figure out why the husband lied to his wife.
• The characters are wonderfully flawed – they read like real people. It’s refreshing, because you read about people you can relate to, and Semple always finds really lovely redeeming qualities about them. No matter how imperfect they are, they have things that are good about them, too. (Ultimately, it just makes you feel better about yourself!)
• THE HUMOR. Oh my GOODNESS Semple is funny. She has a way of describing people and their motives in such a transparent way that you can’t help but laugh at how ridiculous we are sometimes.

I liked it, but not as much as Where’d You Go, Bernadette.

Have you read this one? What about her other? What’s a funny book you read recently that you enjoyed?

A.S. Thornton

A.S. Thornton has evolved from book blogger to author with a particular fondness for writing forbidden love in ancient deserts. When not writing, she’s caring for dogs and cats as a veterinarian. You’ll never find animals at the center of her writing, though, because those fictional worlds don’t have veterinarians and her literal brain can’t accept that the poor critters would be without parasite prevention. Thornton’s debut, DAUGHTER OF THE SALT KING is available wherever books are sold.