Savannah "Van" Leone met Peter Clarke on their first day of
undergrad. She made one of those embarrassing entrances
that only occur in nightmares, and he came to her rescue.
After class, they went for coffee, and a fast friendship was
formed. Van quickly fell in love, but Peter met Van's best
friend Janie and fell in love with her. Six years later,
Van is serving as the maid of honor at their wedding,
pumpkin-orange gown and all.
After the ceremony, Peter comes to Van and kisses her. When
it seems that he may be ready to profess his love for her,
Van encourages him to return to Janie. When he tries again,
Janie's mom enters the room. After that debacle, Van goes
home and treats herself to a bottle of vodka and a Rin Tin
Tin marathon. This leads to her adopting a puppy she finds
on the internet... from Slovakia. Or so she thinks. What
she ends up with is a hundred-pound German Shepherd who only
responds to commands in Slovak and comes with a special
recipe for his meals.
When Van takes Joe (as she names her newly-acquired dog) to
the vet, she meets Dr. Alex Brandt, who is handsome and
charming. They begin an easy friendship, mostly centered
around Joe, which then eases into a dating relationship.
However, Alex has been burnt before (he's divorced), and Van
is still feeling gun-shy from her pseudo-relationship with
Peter.
Just as things are starting to really click for Alex and
Van, Peter and Janie come back from their honeymoon and
begin to wreak havoc on Van's life. All this happens as Van
is trying to find a new house (her condo association is
kicking her out for violating the pet policy), and Alex
finds out that Van has been hiding some secrets.
This was an endearing story from beginning to end. Although
it would be easy to get frustrated with Van, she wasn't
painted as a girl feeling sorry for herself and pining over
a boy. Instead, she was a woman who didn't understand why
her relationship wound up where they did, and this
relationship with Peter was just another example that she
tried to examine. And when she made mistakes (such as
drunk-ordering a dog), she tried to make the best
of it, rather than making the problem go away.
Some of the scenes with Van and Joe were probably supposed
to be more humorous than they seemed, but they made me
uncomfortable. I always feel uncomfortable when an animal
is doing what animals do and the human yells at them, which
was initially how Van reacted to a lot of Joe's antics. The
subplot with Louis was especially compelling, and I was
pleased with how that turned out. While the resolution of
the book was satisfying, it did seem a little abrupt.
Savannah "Van" Leone has been in love with Peter Clarke
since their first day of college. Six years later, Peter is
marrying Van's best friend, Janie. Loyal to a fault, Van
dons her pumpkin-orange, maid-of- honor gown and stands up
for the couple, struggling to hide her true feelings even
when she couldn't be more conspicuous. After the wedding,
nursing her broken heart with a Rin Tin Tin marathon plus a
vodka chaser, Van accidentally orders a German Shepherd
puppy over the Internet. When "Joe" turns out to be a
hundred-pound beast who only responds to commands in Slovak,
Van is at the end of her rope-until she realizes that
sometimes life needs to get more complicated before it can
get better.
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