Am I Allergic to Men? By Kristen Bailey
A showcase on the power of unconditional love.
I was so surprised when I learned that this was book FIVE in a series! WHAT?!?! Rest assured, I didn’t read 1-4 (yet) and there was not one thing that caused me to question. This reads like a stand alone. So, if you’re late to the Callaghan family party like myself, this was a great place to start!
Let me set the stage for you before we get started:
A starving artist (actress)
An upcoming woodstock-ish 30th birthday bash
Getting run over by a bus
Waking up thinking you’re 17
Now that the premise of the book is out of the way, we can move on. This book is ultimately a wonderfully charming and sweet tribute to the power of unconditional love of family, of being unapologetically yourself, and of never settling for less than what you want out of life.
Without these characters, there is no story here. Lucy is about to turn 30 and is the youngest of five girls. The fact that their father lived in a house with six women is hilarious all in itself! Poor guy! When Lucy wakes up after suffering a brain injury after she tried to take on a bus, she is overwhelmed with having lost more than a decade of her life.
Her amazing sisters all have children of their own and are married or in some state of relationship, while she thinks she is still in young love with her douchebag, teenage ex boyfriend. The family drops everything and rallies around bringing Lucy back to her eccentric self.
The sisters, Grace, Beth, Meg and Emma are each uniquely developed to set them apart from each other. It would have been easy in the character development for there to be blurred lines and forgetting who is who, but Bailey clearly knew each sister’s personality and life story intimately. But while the four other sisters have taken on more traditional paths in life, Lucy is the no regrets, march to her own drum, rules-don’t-apply-to-me kinda girl who clearly is the glue that holds the entire family together.
I loved the sister’s interactions. Their willingness to drop absolutely everything to help Lucy travel down memory lane looking for that one thing that will trigger the flood of memories and experiences to come back. The pain the sister’s feel for Lucy is tangible. At the end, all I thought was that I wished everyone had a family that loves them as unconditionally as Lucy does.
Their mother is the best, but I guess you have to when Lucy is a TMI, no filter, what have you done now child, but the moment that Lucy wakes up with amnesia she is lost in who she is. She is a stranger in her own body. While their mother doesn’t play a huge role, she provides the inspiration for several very humorous scenes.
“Anyway, by the time you’re forty, you’re not a princess any more. You’re a queen.”
While I thought the book was light hearted, and funny there were only a few places where I would say it was laugh out loud funny. The humor lands more in the off the wall, absurdity of Lucy’s character. The snarkiness of her personality in interacting with people like Igor and the lady from the school she attended as a teenager. Even with amnesia, Lucy has a personality that I think that we all, to some degree, wish we had a little bit of. She definitely was living her best life!
The plot itself was well paced and kept to the pace of Lucy’s crazy lifestyle. I enjoyed traipsing through her past with her and her sisters as they revisited and relived all that was important to her. Meeting several of the many people she has slept away her 20s with was at times pretty uncomfortable for everyone, adding to the humor. Even though she doesn’t remember her very active and diverse love life, Lucy uses all the moments and conversations as means to figure herself out. Each of these interactions serves a different purpose in the overall plot development and different sisters and friends are present for different moments which all impact the outcomes.
But, the new memories and moments were just as fun. The best scene of the book was when the whole family was at the Carnival type event. That was the epitome of family's got your back. The sister’s don’t just act the way they do with each other, but it extends to every single one of their children. And these nieces and nephews? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Throughout it all, the power of family and sisterhood shines through. Lucy loves her sisters and adores her nieces and nephews. There is not a moment in the book where that power of love message isn’t evident. I think that’s why I enjoyed it so much. I think of my little family and while I only have two kids and not five, I know that each of them would drop anything and everything for the other. The world needs more of this!
If you have read any of my reviews before, you know that I am a character driven reader. The plot can be magnificent, but if the characters aren’t up to standard, I don’t really care about the plot. This book is driven by character. Everyone should be able to relate to at least one of the sisters!. I also liked that it wasn’t wrapped up around a love interest. A lover didn’t swoop in and save the day and bring her memories back. This was all about Lucy and her family, through and through.
Where does this land on my bookshelf?
You can find this one way up at the front of my middle shelf. It’s not quite on my top shelf, but it is so close. I love the importance of family, accepting everyone without judgment, and ultimately being true to yourself and not pretending to be anyone other than who you are themes that are woven throughout. I do appreciate when a book wraps up the story with a pretty little bow so I don’t have left over questions, and this one does that exceptionally well. I would definitely recommend this if you are looking for a fun and funny story about a crazy, off the wall family. You will definitely enjoy this one. I’m not sure the title, Am I Allergic to Men?, is the most fitting, but there is that one moment when it’s discussed, so maybe?
Am I Allergic to Men? Is now available! Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture for an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
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