Rating: 1 1/2 stars
Sum of Her Parts opens with the protagonist, Melanie Spencer Giani on the run. With a face that reminds everybody of somebody, it’s tough to fly under the radar. When your face is on the news and you’re married into one of the most well-known and powerful families, it’s even harder.
Sitting in a hotel bar, planning her next move, Melanie meets Brian, who mistakenly thinks he knows her. Brian is a faithful husband and father of one in Chicago on business.
The next day, while working out in the hotel gym, Brian sees Melanie’s face on TV and her concerned parents pleading for information on her disappearance. Finger poised to call the hotline, Melanie walks in and begs Brian to help her. Although he agrees, Brian will quickly regret his decision when he realizes there’s a lot more to the story than Melanie is letting on.
The ongoing thread throughout the story is Melanie’s first love, 19-year-old Charley, a bad-boy, drug dealer who let then-15-year-old Melanie take the fall after he stole a car. After the charges were settled, Melanie caught Charley with another woman; running away in tears as Charley professed his love for her. Melanie’s parents dropped everything to take Melanie away from her troubled life in Florida—namely Charley—even going as far as to change their names. Now Charley keeps popping up in Melanie’s life like a bad penny, intent on showing her how much he has changed and win her back.
Although it might seem romantic that a first love would spend his life trying to make things right and get you back, this is anything but that. After awhile Charley and Melanie’s sick relationship becomes tedious and their conversations repetitive and stilted. Charley always shows up right when Melanie's life is getting on track; such as when she successfully pulls her school and social life together and then again when she's trying on her wedding dress.
Additionally, despite Melanie being a naïve teen, you’d think you’d be able to muster up some sympathy for her, as love is blind—and young love is deaf and dumb to boot. However, Melanie is a manipulative, calculating bitch as a teenager and she doesn’t change as an adult. It’s very difficult to have any sympathy for her, much less care about her plight.
Told through alternating flash-backs and current day, Melanie’s story takes too long to unfold and her lack of moral character makes it difficult to hang on long enough to see it through.
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Paperback: 312 pages
Publisher: Needle Rat Fiction (August 31, 2010)
ISBN-13: 978-1935715023