Alice Rue Evades the Truth
by Emily Zipps
“While You Were Sleeping” meets the 21st century,
with better diversity representation and more complex relationship
questions than just which potential mate will give her a happily ever after. Better still, if that’s all it was - a gender queer
retelling - it would still be a worthy read because of Alice's inimitable voice: first person energy in a third person POV, which makes it easy to keep turning the pages, even when it’s late at night and you
should be sleeping.
After all, Alice isn’t sleeping. Between her first
experience of performing CPR and fielding paramedics’ questions, and
watching the hottest, richest crush of her entire adult life being shoved into the back of an
ambulance, it’s not exactly her typical 4 AM.
And two hours later, her boss is trying to fire her when her crush Nolan's whole flaky family stops by on the way to the hospital,
talking nonstop amongst themselves and with Alice, all yearning to learn what happened and whether Nolan will survive.
There is definitely more sexy chemistry than there was in that
movie with Bill Pullman as the home-grown handyman sibling of sleekly handsome Coma Man. And yet it’s all tastefully done, easing Alice and Nolan's sibling Van believably closer by the day, with all the
accompanying guilt feelings and a bit of obligatory cookie-baking. The comedic impact of the giant dog and cuteness factor of the adorably messy preschoolers adds a lot of heart to this tale of true love not running smooth.
True love isn’t the only thing at stake here either. Because
Alice has some some trauma in her past to work through, and Van has some related issues that definitely trigger her, a HEA is far from guaranteed. There's unexplained tension between some family members and a bit of very polite homophobia that has to be managed. All in all, Alice faces a very real possibility that she is
going to rue the day she ever met this family, especially as she keeps
hurting the one member she most cares about.
Moral complexity, personal growth, issues of creating one’s own
future place in the world, all raise this novel above its sweet and
charming holiday rom-com inspiration. And it is way more thirsty than the
sanitized for TV. Bill Pullman and Sandra Bullock story.
Fun and
heartwarming and touching in so many ways. And did I mention thirsty? If you yearn for a plaid-wearing, cuddly, sexy girlfriend this holiday season, this is the book for you.
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