TLC Book Tours: The Idea of Him by Holly Peterson

The Idea of Him is the story of Allie Crawford, a successful public relations exec, mother of two, wife to high-flying magazine editor Wade. Her life sounds perfect.

But is it?

At a party, she finds her handsome husband in the laundry room with a gorgeous leggy young woman, and her imagination jumps to that one obvious answer. But the truth isn’t quite what she’s expecting.

And she’s had it with carrying the lion’s share of the child-rearing, despite her own very busy schedule and demanding boss. She’s had to put up with helping host her husband’s parties. Plus she’s struggling with her dreams of making it as a screenwriter, taking classes at New York University, but with everything that’s going on, it’s hard to find time and clear her head to write. And her handsome screenwriting classmate Tommy is somewhat of a distraction…

Many women will be able to relate to Allie. Her busy life, her wanting to do more with her life, her frustrations with her job and her marriage. A backstory involving her father intrigues as it is introduced right at the beginning, but it never seemed fully realised for me, and made me wonder why it was given such a key place in the story.

The other characters seem to be more of caricatures, supersized personalities. Her loud-mouthed boss Murray with his trophy wife. Her glamorous husband Wade with his focus on his work and his dabblings on the side. The male characters were rather unlikeable, and I wondered if that was the intention.

I didn’t feel much of a connection with the characters. A little with Allie at first, as she tries to manage her family, her work life and her dreams, and the fears she has about her husband, but as the story progressed, and I learnt of some of the choices she made, I felt the distance between us widening. The uneven flow of the story didn’t really make an easy read either.

The Idea of Him wasn’t the book for me.

Holly Peterson is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Manny. She was a contributing editor for Newsweek and editor-at-large for Talk magazine. She was also an Emmy Award-winning producer for ABC News for more than a decade, where she covered global politics. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, Talk, the Daily Beast, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and other publications.

Find out more about Holly at her website, connect with her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter.