Book Review: The LIfe You've Imagined

Are any of us living the life we imagined we'd have? I don't mean becoming a firefighter or a ballerina, but the daily quality of life with our families and careers? Kristina Riggle shares the lives of two single women in their early 30s, each at a crossroads in her life, with The Life You've Imagined.
Cami and Anna, friends in high school, have each coincidentally returned to the small lakeside town of Haven, MI at the same time. Their lives drifted into very different directions  but they easily fall back into their friendship, working at the Nee Nance convenience store owned by Anna's mother, Maeve. Anna has returned home for some quiet time away from her job as a high-powered Chicago lawyer, and is living with her mother above the Nee Nance in her1970s wood-paneled bedroom. Cami returns to her father's ramshackle house, a place of terrible memories, because she literally has no place to go after a relationship break-up.

Told through first-person narration of each character, readers learn of the secrets of both Anna and Cami, as well as their parents. The Life You've Imaginedmakes readers think about parents and adult children in a different way. Do we really know our parents as well as we think? And do they know us better than we realize? Although both Cami and Anna return to Haven adrift, confused, and overwhelmed by life, by the end of the summer they are both heading into positive futures, and know they have a strong friendship that will sustain. I enjoyed The Life You've Imaginedfor reasons both thoughtful and whimsical. Memories of my own childhood paneling, running into the convenience store for a candy bar or popsicle, and the cycle of certain family disagreements that never go away, made me smile. The relationship of children and parents, which stays the same in some ways, but reverses in others was interesting to me, as someone close in age to Anna and Cami. The Life You've Imaginedis a book that made me think, while still be a very entertaining story.
This review is part of a TLC book tour. To read the thoughts of more book bloggers, you can visit TLC's Life You've Imagined page.