The Opposite of Me

Author: Sarah Pekkanen

ISBN: 9781439121986

The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen tells the story of two sisters who couldn’t be more different.

Lindsey Rose is a workaholic. She works at a NYC advertising agency, where she is highly successful. Competing with the office whore for the biggest account and a huge promotion, Lindsey feels on top of the world. When she loses the account AND the promotion, she makes a huge drunken mistake by making out with one of her colleagues and gets fired.

She moves back home to Maryland, where she’s told her entire family that she’s in charge of opening a DC branch of the advertising agency.

Lindsey dreads seeing her sister Alex. Alex is perfect. She’s gorgeous and always has been. She models and appears on TV regularly. All Lindsey’s life, she worked hard to be the smart one to set herself apart from her twin sister Alex.

Lindsey falls into a nice little routine at home. She takes up shopping as a hobby, enjoys the feeling of looking beautiful, something she always yearned for when Alex was gaining attention from every one around them. She meets a new friend who introduces her to a career as a matchmaker. Everything seems to be going great…until there is an accident.

Faced with a crisis, Lindsey must put her jealousy and feelings for her sister behind in order to be there for her.

I really enjoyed this book. I started reading it on my flight to Chicago and before I knew it I was 100 pages in.

I could relate to Lindsey. Lindsey worked in advertising. I work in PR. I could understand the need for Lindsey to be a workaholic (though I am no where near as crazy as she is!) but I understood her field and the pressure she was under. I enjoyed learning about the campaign Lindsey was working on and reading about the workplace competitiveness. I anxiously flipped pages waiting to see if Lindsey would win the coveted promotion she so deserved.

I loved the story being told from Lindsey’s point of view. There was a lot of internal discussion that I enjoyed reading and could relate to based on my relationship with my own sister. The core discussion that I loved about this book was the idea that from an early age, we are stereotyped within our families: the smart one, the pretty one, the athletic one, etc. This book discusses whether we can escape the “roles” we are given from the time we are born. Do you think it’s possible?

My only problem with the book was the ending. While I felt like things were wrapping up neatly into a happy ending, the book ended before we fully got to that point. This leads me to wondering if there will be a sequel. Things seemed to end abruptly and there is so much more to explore. However, things did seem to end neatly enough that a sequel doesn’t seem guaranteed.

I was initially drawn to this book because I’d heard that the writing style was similar to Jennifer Weiner (my all time favorite author!) and Emily Giffin. I would definitely agree that the ideas and inward dialogue reminded me of these two other authors, so if you like them, give this one a try!

Stay tuned for an interview with author Sarah Pekkanen!

4/5

Note: This book was sent to me to review from the author.