Book Review: Sundays at Tiffany's

This novel is absolutely perfect for those of you who enjoy some light reading. It's more than a romance novel, it's a novel about love.

The story deals with the theme of love between old friends, and between mother and daughter. So, it is not exactly a soapy love story in the right sense.

I did not expect this kind of story from a thriller writer like James Patterson. Almost all the novels he has written are suspense thrillers. This must have been something relatively new to him. I found the idea of reading a love story written by a thriller writer exciting.

The story is basically very simple. As a child, Jane had nobody. Her single mother Vivienne was always too busy with her successful career as a Broadway director. Her father, after the divorce, was always preoccupied with his young girlfriends. There was only one person in her life...

Michael...

He was a handsome young man who would always keep Jane company. But he was nothing more than an imaginary friend sent by God to accompany lonely and neglected children on earth. Though Jane loved Michael with all her heart since he was the only real friend she ever had, to Michael, Jane was merely an assignment. As Jane grew older, it was time for Michael to move on to his new assignment as she was getting too matured to believe in an imaginary friend any longer.

So when Michael leaves, he is assured that Jane, like his other assignments, would forget him someday as she grows older. But this is not the case with Jane. She continues to remember him, even as an upcoming movie director in New York City.

Michael is very much a huge part of Jane's life that she directed a surprise hit Broadway show on her life with her imaginary friend. After the show became a very popular, she was offered to make a movie adaptation of it. Her fiancé, the hunky but abusive Hugh, who played Michael in the Broadway show, continues to court her just so he can get the part in the movie adaptation as well.

Jane, constantly being the bully victim of both by her mother and fiancé, strives for freedom of her own. She longs to direct the movie her way, with a cast of her choice, with the script she had wrote herself, with all the beautiful memories of Michael that she alone has. But all these seem almost impossible with Vivienne and Hugh always controlling poor Jane's life.

The story the shifts to Michael's point of view, who is on leave from his job as an imaginary friend. During their day-offs, imaginary friends can live, breath and be seen by regular people and not just by their assigned children. In other words, they become humans during this period of time. But Michael, still being the good being he naturally is, continues to help the people around him with the problems they have, making friends along the way.

Problems arise when Jane bumps into Michael. They instantly recognize each other, and there is an instant connection between them. This then forms the rest of this story.

The ending, though rather clichéd, is still strong and unarguably the most beautiful part of the story. You might get annoyed with the rather two dimensional characters as the story demands more of them. But still, for those of you who enjoy Nicholas Spark's novels, but with a fantasy twist in it, then this book is for you. I give it a three and a half over five stars.