Movie vs. Book: A Simple Favor

The entire time I read Darcey Bell’s page-turner of a noir novel A Simple Favor, all I could think was “this is VERY Gone Girl.” And that’s not a bad thing. Were some of the plotlines a bit predictable? Yes. But the French noir tone of the book, the rotating narrators and the big twists every 50 pages or so kept me on my toes.

A Simple Favor tells the story of a widowed mother, Stephanie who meets a beautiful bombshell of a working mother named Emily. Their sons are friends at school, and they spend time together while the boys have playdates. Shortly after their friendship blossoms, Emily goes missing. Her husband Sean is the initial suspect, but has an alibi. So Stephanie spends the following weeks searching for Emily, blogging about her disappearance and requesting help from other mothers, caring for Emily’s son and eventually falling in love with Emily’s husband. She moves in on Emily’s life.

But then the boys start telling Stephanie they see Emily at school, and suddenly Stephanie is receiving phone calls from her. Emily is very much alive. Disappearing and faking her own death to earn life insurance money, Emily doesn’t really care about Stephanie or Sean. She’s a woman on a mission and she’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish that and find a better life for her and her son. Screw the husband. And screw Stephanie.

All this is pretty well-followed in the first half of the movie version. Blake Lively is the PERFECT Emily — so exquisitely beautiful, fashionable, direct, and confident. Anna Kendrick is the perfect Stephanie: kind of slutty and inherently dumb. But all the twists in the second half of the movie are a significant departure from the book. In the movie, more people are murdered. In the movie, a completely different person “wins” in the end.

The changes made for the movie deeply villainize Emily’s character, making her inherently evil, whereas in the book, Emily has a soft side. There are certain people in her life who she cares for deeply. Her character in the book is a lot more complicated, which makes her so deliciously fun to follow along. It’s easy to get down with her badassery and be swept away by her charm. The changes made for the movie also empower Stephanie’s character. She is emboldened and stands up for herself in the cat and mouse game she plays with Emily. In the book, she starts as the mouse and remains the mouse.

My guess is the changes made for the movie were meant to indulge the audience: the less complicated the characters, the easier it is to root for one over the other. And the movie does a good job of still being deliciously fun (even though the ending goes a little off the rails in its absurdity).

I prefer the book and its darkness, its open-ended finish, its complicated grey-area characters. But that said, watching Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively spar with each other is never a bad way to spend two hours.

Get A Simple Favor in paperback for $11.22.

Or on your Kindle for $10.99.

Review: You Are A Badass

I had recently started a new job, hit the one year anniversary of my father’s death and was about to turn 30. There were so many things running through my mind, so much doubt, so much negative self-speak, so much worry about the future, reflecting on the past and wondering if I was meeting my proper potential in the present. It was the perfect time to finally read the highly recommended You Are A Badass. And I’m so glad I did.

Author Jen Sincero uses this self-help guide to not only get to realize your self-worth and gain confidence, but as an instructional aide explaining why we are the way we are. She explains that “faking it til we make it” just won’t work. If your subconscious doesn’t truly believe what you’re telling yourself to believe, then it will never come. So in order to achieve your dreams, gain confidence and find your inner badass, you have to start from the inside out. She gives both concrete active doable examples and more philosophical abstract ways to think about things to get you to love yourself, figure out what your dreams are, work toward them without self-doubt and realize your awesome potential. Meditation, time management, gratitude, offering kindness to others, pushing away fear — all of these are very doable things once we decide we’re going to do it.

But my biggest takeaway from the book (by far) is the concept that what you put out in the world will bounce back to you. If you are negative all the time, you’re only going to experience negative things. But if you are positive and put those positive vibes out there, believe you’re going to have good days and accomplish your goals, then you will. The universe will hear you.

Does all this sound hokey? Sure. It probably does. But the fact is Sincero believes so strongly in these ideas and is so passionate about them throughout this book, that it’s hard not to hop on board and believe it.

Shortly after I read this book, my husband and I were shopping and stopped in an art gallery. I saw a painting that I thought was really pretty, so I told my husband “look how beautiful that one is.” Then I heard a man behind me say “you just made my day. I’m the artist.” He then went on to show us some of his other work that was displayed in the gallery. To be nice, my husband and I started looking through the pieces and unexpectedly stumbled across the perfect painting and gift for my newborn niece. The artist then offered to sign the back of the piece for us and wrote a very sweet note for my niece. I firmly believe that if I hadn’t put the positive vibes out there and complimented this man’s work (without even knowing he was in the gallery), he wouldn’t have shown us his other work, we wouldn’t have found the piece, he wouldn’t have signed it and my niece wouldn’t be getting a beautiful gift out of it.

You Are A Badass is not just any self-help book. It is a perspective-shifting book. It has reshaped the way I view the world and my attitude. Whenever I find myself in a low place, this will be the book I turn to.

Get You Are A Badass in paperback now for $9.59.

Or get it on your Kindle for $9.99.

Movie vs. Book: Crazy Rich Asians

Rachel Chu is nervous. She’s about to go to Singapore for the first time with her boyfriend Nick, but this is not just some vacation. They’re visiting for his best friend’s wedding, and it will be the first time she’s meeting Nick’s family. Rachel takes some time to decide, but ultimately determines it would be a fun way to spend her summer off from teaching economics at NYU.

What she doesn’t realize is how nervous she really should be. As it turns out, Nick comes from one of the wealthiest families in Asia. He keeps this information on the down low so as not to be treated differently, but from the moment she hops the plane with him, she begins to understand his very rich reality and quickly comes to realize she may not be accepted by his family or friends.

Yes, Rachel is Chinese. But she is American-born Chinese (ABC), and to his traditional mother, ABC is essentially unacceptable. This pit-in-the-stomach, all-out sinking feeling is excellently portrayed in the movie version of Crazy Rich Asians based on the 2013 bestselling novel. The movie beautifully emphasizes all the best parts of the novel: the romance between Rachel and Nick, the drama between Rachel and Nick’s mother Eleanor, and the glitz and glamour of Singapore and the crazy rich Asians who live there.

The movie follows the book fairly closely except for the ending. The movie adds a scene in which Nick’s family and Rachel make dumplings together, offering an opportunity for Rachel and Eleanor to get to know each other better. The building of their relationship is effectively trashed when only minutes later, Eleanor tells Rachel she will “never be enough.” This scene adds a layer of indiscreet, purposeful anger between Rachel and Eleanor, which then gives Rachel a reason to show Eleanor who’s boss. This is a significant and positive change from the novel. Where Rachel remains mostly timid in the book, this scene in the movie pushes Rachel to fight for the alpha female role, positioning herself strongly against Eleanor so that she stands up for herself in a way we don’t get to witness in the book.

It then leads to a different and happier ending between Rachel and Nick and a more concretely positive relationship between Rachel and Eleanor.

As it aimed to be one of, if not the most successful rom-com in years, Crazy Rich Asians had no choice but to tidy up some of the open-endedness of the book. But the plot choices made at the end of the novel were made to set up the next book in the trilogy (China Rich Girlfriend), and that is lost in the movie. (That includes much of the storyline about Astrid, Nick’s beautiful cousin.) This matters now because the movie sequel has already been confirmed, thanks to the wild success of the first movie.

Crazy Rich Asians is everything a girl could possibly want in a romantic comedy: romance! scandal! makeover montages! a big, beautiful wedding! But it’s possible — nay, definite — that the novel has more depth to offer.

Get Crazy Rich Asians in paperback for $9.60.

Or get it on your Kindle for $9.99.