I "read" Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed last year through my library's eaudiobook collection. All the books I really wanted to check out had ridiculously long wait lists and I needed to get a mountain of cleaning done because family was getting into town two days later. So, I halfheartedly downloaded the foofy-covered book and expected some mediocre hours of entertainment. It is, after all, chick-lit.

But this isn't a justification for chick-lit genre, whatever the term has come to mean over the last few years. In fact, after I read this book, I vowed to discount labels. Why bother to try categorizing anything these days? Labels mean so little; most of the time we slap on a label it's wrong, or it doesn't present an accurate picture, or it's plain misleading.

So, you can call this chick-lit. And I'll say it's escapist. Entertaining. Funny. Heartrending. Vivid. Made housework enjoyable (ok, well maybe tolerable).

Anyhow, while at Walgreen's last night, I saw the paperback edition of the book next to the checkout stand. I'm not one for movie-tie ins. I'm also not a fan of mass market paperbacks, but I enjoyed this book so much, I couldn't resist. Needless to say, I re-read it last night in a few hours and here we are.

Product Description:

The smash-hit debut novel for every woman who has ever had a complicated love-hate friendship. Rachel White is the consummate good girl. A hard-working attorney at a large Manhattan law firm and a diligent maid of honor to her charmed best friend Darcy, Rachel has always played by all the rules. Since grade school, she has watched Darcy shine, quietly accepting the sidekick role in their lopsided friendship. But that suddenly changes the night of her thirtieth birthday when Rachel finally confesses her feelings to Darcy's fiance, and is both horrified and thrilled to discover that he feels the same way. As the wedding date draws near, events spiral out of control, and Rachel knows she must make a choice between her heart and conscience. In so doing, she discovers that the lines between right and wrong can be blurry, endings aren't always neat, and sometimes you have to risk everything to be true to yourself.

*Ok, the blurb is a mite bit misleading: Rachel does not confess her feelings to Dex on that night. It happens a little differently.

Okay--now the arguments I had with myself over enjoying this book as much as I did.

1.Women-Stop competing with each other.

2. Never pick a man (boy) over your female friend.

3. Men should not complete you.

I try to practice what I preach as well. I'm not competitive by nature, so the first one is easy. But when I was younger (like high school younger) I was on both sides of number two. I lost one friend when she screwed me over for a guy, and even though I got over it, she couldn't get past it, weirdly enough. And as much as I wish I hadn't, I also screwed over a couple friends for their boyfriends. In one case, I confessed. In another, I was found out. The second case ended badly and we didn't speak for over ten years.

It's amazing what we girls do to get attention from boys. It's also sad how we depend on them for sources of confidence. As an adult, and now a mother of four daughters, I try my hardest to instill in my girls that confidence should come from no one but you, and that self-esteem comes from "doing" and not "being."

And yet...

The world will not change overnight. Girls are competitive. I don't know where it comes from; we can blame social conditioning, parenting, gender....who knows? Maybe we contribute to it every time we tell our tell our little girls (after we've dressed them up) to "Go show Daddy." I mean, what is we are really doing when we set this up? What information are we unwittingly transmitting?

My fifth grader is a wealth of information on this. I hear her on the phone, and in the course of one day, she talks to Skylar about Hunter, then tells Hunter that Skyler likes him. Then talks to Haylee and tells her that Skyler is not pretty enough for him. Then tells Skyler that Hunter likes her too (Even though Hunter doesn't) and I'm by turns confounded, horrified, angry, and devastated.

Who is this child? From where the hell did she learn this? From the time she was small, I have hammered it into her head, that girl-friends come before boys. Always.

And yet...

Giffin handles this material wonderfully. No one is entirely a villain in this book. Darcy is the spotlight stealer for sure, and she rides roughshod over Rachel many, many times. But she is also the girl who stands up to rude men in airplanes and senior girls with attitudes for Rachel.Darcy, unlike many girls her age, never ditched her friends for a boy, instead bringing her friends along with her on dates.

But she's also the girl who lies about her SAT scores to one-up her friends. And she goes out with Rachel's fourth grade crush. And she.... really, it's hilarious to hear Rachel try to justify her actions to a made up jury present in only her mind.

Because, when it comes down to it, we have a whole group of characters (all thirty-ish)who lie without remorse, who shy away from make decisions based on their future, who run away from any sort of real-ness in their lives, who worry more about what people will say, than about what matters most.

And in the middle of it all, there's Rachel: passive in her own life. Scared of asking for what she wants. Ready to please anyone who demands to be pleased. Taking the little that comes her way.

In short, I have no real faith in my own happiness. And then there is Darcy. She is a woman who believes things should fall into her lap, and consequently, they do. They always have. She wins because she expects to win. I do not expect to get what I want, so I don't. And I don't even try.

Fellow feminists, you might not like this book. You may say it perpetuates the cycle of women bashing that we see everywhere. And you might be right. But it is an enjoyable read. And it does a good job of portraying the competition between two female best friends, and the small and big slights that happen every day.

There are no earth shattering insights in here, or stunning literary feats.

But it's a thoughtful, well written novel that explores the relationship between women, and the ways we both contribute to and debilitate each other's growth.

4 out of 5 stars.

Oh, and there's a second in the series (Something Blue). And this time, it's from Darcy's point of view.