Book Review: Skipping a Beat

Skipping a Beat by Sarah Pekkanen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

From the outside, Julia and Michael seem to have it all.  Both products of difficult childhoods in rural West Virginia – where they were simply Julie and Mike – they become high school sweethearts and fall in love.  Shortly after graduation, they flee their small town to start afresh.  Now thirty-somethings, they are living a rarefied life in their multi-million-dollar, Washington D.C. home. Julia is a highly sought-after party planner, while Michael has just sold his wildly successful flavored water company for $70 million.

But one day, Michael collapses in his office. Four minutes and eight seconds after his cardiac arrest, a portable defibrillator jump-starts his heart. But in those lost minutes he becomes a different man. Money is meaningless to him – and he wants to give it all away. Julia, who sees bits of her life reflected in scenes from the world’s great operas, is now facing with a choice she never anticipated. Should she should walk away from the man she once adored – but who truthfully became a stranger to her long before this pronouncement – or give in to her husband’s pleas for a second chance and a promise of a poorer but happier life?

The premise of this book intrigued me. Would it be that easy to give up so much material wealth for a marriage that wasn’t that great in the first place? The author did a good job of setting up Julia’s back-story so that we understand why financial security is even more important to her than most people. However, I still had a hard time feeling sorry for her because I found her to be so selfish. Her relationship with Michael baffled me; their marriage seemed to deteriorate so quickly after Michael’s company took off and their lack of communication after that was astounding. If I were Julia, there were some things that I could not have kept my mouth shut about. I really liked Julia’s friend Isabelle. I would love to see a spin-off book with her as the main character.

I chose this book for my book club’s June read based on the great reviews it got around the blogosphere when it was first published. After reading it, I feel like my book club friends and I may be cold-hearted snakes because none of us liked it that much. That said, we still had a good, long conversation – mostly about the issues surrounding marriage that the book brings up.

I felt lukewarm about this book – I never cared enough about the characters, especially Julia, that I felt like crying over them. A lot of other reviewers were crying buckets at the end so maybe that says more about me than this book! I did enjoy parts of this book and clearly a lot of other people out there have enjoyed it wholeheartedly so you may want to check out some other reviews besides mine.

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