Love in the Time of Taffeta

I learned of "Love in the Time of Taffeta" through a book review in BUST magazine and decided to check it out from the public library. I finished the book in one night. I've since read Eugenie Olson's other two books and out of the three, this is the best of the bunch. Iley is imperfect and continually makes mistakes before slowly wising up. With Olson's other two books, they both had that "Oh! And it was all right there in front of me and I'm just noticing it!" conveniently about 30 pages before the end of the book. Fortunately, "Taffeta" has less of that. The ending isn't a perfectly-tied bow. It seemed more realistic in how the character has to redeem herself to those she hurt during her careless fling. There are points in the book where you'll go, "How could she be so stupid?!?" But realistically, isn't that part of life? Making mistakes that others may see as avoidable, but we need to go through those errors (and hopefully learn from them) to become a better person.

Photographer Iley Gilbert feels depressed as recent decisions she made turned out bad for her career. Needing to make some money, she accepts a job as a prom assistant during the prom season. Her married boss William is a hunk and though she knows better she cannot resist the handsome William and soon they have an affair. Iley knows the tryst with William is a nowhere street and needs to end it, but she cannot bring herself to do so. As the prom season continues Iley finds herself drawn to a bad girl waif who appears at each prom they shoot. She decides to help the teen, but in doing so Iley begins to help herself starting with ending her affair and finding her lost photographic muse. She even has hopes to find a true love, single that is, as the spiraling downward cycle seems ended. As Iley makes one dumb decision after another, fans after awhile will hiss her as no one should be that hedonistically pathetic. Still in spite of readers unable to empathize with her needs, she is a fascinating character who, the out of character ending aside, seems unable to stop herself as she dives head first into one mistake after another. Eugenie Olson paints a picture of a woman who is her own worst enemy. Harriet Klausner