Have you ever wondered ‘what if …’ you had made a different decision in life? Would another choice have taken you down a totally different path? Would life have been better or worse? Would you have ended up with someone different?
In Do You Take This Man? we follow Katie’s two lives and find out what happens to her if she says ‘I do’ and what happens if she stands up her groom.
In many ways, Katie’s two separate realities couldn’t be further apart. But we also see how there are some people and situations you can’t avoid, and that perhaps some things are meant to happen whatever choices you make in life.
Thanks to the lovely people over at Corazon Books, I had the chance to read and review several of Sophie King's novels last year (including 'Love is a Secret' and 'Second Time Lucky'). I thoroughly enjoyed every single work of Sophie I've read so far, including the fabulous novel 'After the Honeymoon' which she wrote under the pseudonym Janey Fraser (click here to read my review). On the 8th of December, Sophie's newest novel 'Do You Take This Man?' was released and I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of the book. I was really looking forward to sitting down with a completely new Sophie King novel and hoped it would be just as much of a fun read as her other works!
Katie is young and in love and about to marry her short-term boyfriend Alec. They haven't been together for a really long time, but marrying Alec feels like the right thing to do to Katie... Or doesn't it? As Katie is sitting in the wedding car, on the way to the church, she suddenly finds her hand on the door handle and she has to make a crucial decision that will alter the course of her entire life: should she stay and marry Alec, or should she go and run away from it all, start over? The reader gets the chance to see what will happen to Katie in both of these situations in the form of two separate realities, both starring Katie and the decisions she makes that affect her life in all kinds of different ways; ways that show that some things happen because of one simple choice and some things are simply meant to be.
I was really excited about this novel, because I've read some of Sophie King's other works, which I really enjoyed from start to finish. 'Do You Take This Man?' reminded me of Ali Harris' 'Written in the Stars' which tells the story of Bea Bishop who knocks her head on the day of her wedding and then imagines what would happen to her if she got married, but also what would happen if she ran away from it all. While the basic plotline of both novels is quite the same, Sophie King decided to take things a bit further by describing approximately twenty years of Katie's life; quite a long period in which the reader gets to see what happens to Katie after she made that one important decision: to get married to Alec or not.
I was really intrigued by the concept of this novel and by Katie's two different realities. Katie is a relatable heroine, especially since I think every single one of us occassionally wonders 'what if...' and in this novel the reader actually gets the chance to experience this 'what if.' I really liked how the author made certain elements come back in both realities, but also adding big differences, showing that some things are meant to be but some things happen made by just small decisions that might seem irrelevant. Like in her other novels, Sophie King provides the reader with a captivating storyline with a convincing cast of both main and secondary characters at its core. While I personally do not think this is one of Sophie's best works, it's definitely something new, enjoyable and worth a read. 'Do You Take This Man?' is a well-written, entertaining and thought-provoking read that will make you think twice about the 'what-if's' in your life.
Rating:
8,5/10
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