Maybe This Time by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

I've read a few books by Seidel, but the only one I really loved was Again (which is a keeper for me). I think it's a combination of the setting (I used to be a soap opera fan, and I loved the behind the scenes setting) and the strong love story, which Seidel often lacks. I admire many of her books, but they just don't do much for me emotionally.

Maybe This Time by Kathleen Gilles Seidel
(1990, Contemporary) 6/12/08
Grade: 3.5

In high school, they were all great friends, and everyone assumed Jeff and Emily would live happily ever after. But it didn’t work out that way, and 15 years later, Emily gets a reminder of the past that pushes her back to her old home town and her high school friends... and Jeff.

The characters in this book were very well written. I really loved the characterization of Emily - her insecurities about being a woman in a male-dominated workplace, her strike for independence by buying her own house, her attempts to become less rigid and more open. Jeff is slightly less defined, but I appreciated his struggles with his family history, how his life and career were shaped by his high school journalism teacher (who wasn’t the hero that Jeff wanted him to be), etc. The secondary characters were mostly defined in terms of how they related to Jeff and Emily, but they had their own unique qualities as well. However, the major drawback in this book was the complete lack of chemistry between Emily and Jeff. They were supposed to have this great love, but no matter how often the author told me that they were attracted to each other, they always seemed to relate to each other as platonic friends, not lovers. The book seemed very episodic, and I think part of that was because the romantic relationship that was supposed to hold the story together just wasn’t there.

The book also felt dated, in an odd way. It came out in 1990, but the characters were teenagers in the mid-60's, which would put the book in the late 70's or early 80's. Some things are universal, but although I appreciated Emily's struggle to be taken seriously at work, some of it pulled me out of the story. It's funny, I can read a historical and not be bothered, but a book set in the 70's seems hard to understand sometimes!