Book Review: "The Worst Kind of Want" by Liska Jacobs

Pricilla Messing has had it with being the responsible one. She's tired of caring for her elderly mother, especially after having to care for her father before his death. She always took a back seat to the relationship between her mother and her younger sister, who was more beautiful and more exciting. Part of her wants to put her mother in an assisted living facility, sell the house, and start some new adventure, but she feels too tethered to her responsibilities.

When Cilla's brother-in-law calls from Rome, asking for help getting her teenage niece to behave, she jumps at the chance to head to Italy. She's not interested in riding herd on Hannah, however; she's more interested in absorbing every ounce of the glamorous Roman lifestyle, one she used to experience regularly as the daughter of an actress and a producer. She'd much rather be Hannah's friend than her chaperone, and it isn't too long before Cilla finds herself clubbing, drinking and eating to excess, and enjoying all the city has to offer.

Being with Hannah and her brother-in-law, Paul, does force Cilla to confront some painful memories about her difficult relationship with her sister Emily, who died of cancer a few years earlier. Hannah reminds Cilla so much of Emily at that age, and at times she has trouble dealing with the many ways their relationship was fraught with jealousy, resentment, and condescension, while at other times they were tremendously close.

Cilla's time in Rome makes her feel vibrant again, for the first time in a long while. When she realizes that one of Hannah's handsome friends, a teenage boy far younger than the forty-something Cilla, is flirting with her, it energizes her to feel desirable by someone out of her league. But as the flirtation moves to something more serious, Cilla has to decide whether the potential thrill is worth the risks. Is she willing to lose her relationship with her family for an encounter with a teenager, however handsome and flirtatious he might be? Should she risk it all to feel desirable again, no matter the consequences?

The Worst Kind of Want tells the story of a woman at a crossroads in her life. This was an interesting, thoughtful meditation on the mindset of a "woman of a certain age." And perhaps not being in that demographic made this a little more difficult for me to connect with the character, although I've not had that issue before.

Jacobs’ imagery was vivid and poetic and she created some interestingly complex, flawed characters. But in the end, although I read the book quickly, I didn’t feel fully engaged by it. I enjoyed her first novel, Catalina, a bit better.

NetGalley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and MCD provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available!

This book publishes November 5.