**Warning: If you haven’t read Something Borrowed and you intend to, don’t read this review yet! Spoilers ahead **

We first met Darcy Rhone in Something Borrowed as the shallow, self-centred, and competitive girl all set to marry her show-and-tell trophy of a fiance, Dex. That novel ends when Dex leaves Darcy for her best friend, Rachel. This infuriates Darcy, not because she was so in love with Dex and they had the perfect relationship, but because he dumped her first, and he did if to be with her plain jane best friend, something she never saw coming.

We knew all along that Dex and Darcy were destined to break up regardless of his affair with Rachel because their relationship was shallow and instable, but we also learn that Darcy cheated on Dex with his groomsman, Marcus. Darcy is even conceited enough to know that she could have gotten away with it if Dex had stayed with her, but unfortunately Marcus also got her pregnant, and the timing was such that Dex would know that he wasn’t the father. So as Something Borrowed ends, we’re happy to know that Dex and Rachel do find their happy ending (or beginning, I suppose) while Darcy is left with exactly what she earned herself: an unwanted pregnancy and total humiliation.

As Something Blue begins, we meet up with Darcy again as she is announcing to the world that she is no longer marrying Dex because he (gasp!) cheated on her. She isn’t about to admit that she also cheated on him, and she most definitely isn’t going to tell anyone yet that’s she’s pregnant by another man. All she wants right now is to be doted on and have her revenge on Dex and Darcy for their betrayals and for humiliating her. She does all she can to flaw their characters while painting herself as the poor innocent all while she continues seeing Marcus quietly on the side.

She may be humiliated, but she has to hold on to some of her pride. Right now, she can not be alone. She needs a man in her life at all times to dote on her and to compete with all the other men. Life isn’t as fun if there isn’t a jealous lover in the wings watching the men flock around Darcy Rhone. She thrives on having drama in her life, and she’d definitely got that with Marcus, especially now that there’s a baby on the way.

But Marcus, it turns out, is no trophy. He doesn’t dress as well as Dex, he certainly doesn’t treat her as well, and he doesn’t buy her presents and coo in her ear encouragingly the way Dex used to. He also isn’t exceptional in the looks department, something that Darcy finds very important. It doesn’t take long for her to begin to wonder what it was about him that made her want to seduce him in the first place. Was it because she was engaged and therefore not allowed to? She didn’t like the idea that she wasn’t allowed to do anything. Or was it because as aggressively as she flirted with Marcus in the beginning, he didn’t want to go there with his friend’s fiancee? How could anyone not want her?

They give it a try for the baby’s sake. Darcy tries to overlook Marcus’ shortcomings even though her family and friends will be shocked when they find out she’s dating someone beneath her standards. She’s sure that if she declares him to be hot, the world has to agree because everyone knows Darcy doesn’t date men that aren’t hot, she sets the hot standard. And so what if they don’t know she’s pregnant yet? By the time they do, they’ll already be believing Marcus is hot and they’ll be so happy for them and envious over what they have. Marcus, to his credit, does try to appease Darcy and fit her expectations: taking her to places he thinks are nice (but she thinks are dull), buying her gifts he put thought into (but she knows is sooo last season). Even more to his credit, Marcus eventually proves to be the more lucid thinker in the relationship and finally tells her flat out that they aren’t going to work. He’s sorry, but “he’s just not that into her.”

Darcy is astounded and unwilling to believe it. She has just suffered another severe humiliation in just a few short months. First, her fiance cheats on her with her mousy best friend, and now she’s being dumped by a man who isn’t even worthy? The ultimate horror is that her family and friends are starting to find out what she’s done, and she’s steadily slipping down in their ranks. She can’t take it anymore; she has to escape.

That’s when she decides to leave it all. She’ll take a “vacation” and invite herself to stay with one of her childhood friends who now lives in London. She’s got a whole new plan that’s going to save her reputation and her whole life. She’ll move to England where the mannerly and impeccably groomed English men will fawn over the beautiful American. She’ll meet a successful and handsome man, someone who will leave Dex in the dust and propel her back to the top and make her the envy of all her so-called friends. This man will become so enamored with her beauty and charm that she’ll be living in his high-end flat socializing with Madonna, Gwyneth, Posh and Bex before her pregnancy even starts showing, and by then he’ll have hear the whole sad story and whole-heartedly agree to raise it as his own.

Of course, Darcy should recognize that her life hasn’t been going her way for a while now and it’s not about to become a fairy tale any time soon. She’s starting over in London, but it’s in a foreign city without her circle of friends to go bar-hopping with, and without them there isn’t much opportunity to go out and meet the dapper Englishmen. For the first time in her life, Darcy is truly alone and forced to face the truth: impending motherhood, no friends, a family that’s shunned her, and a scarred reputation.

While Something Borrowed is a novel about friendships, relationships and loyalties, this is a novel about transformation, self-discovery, and redemption. It’s satisfying to see Darcy transform, and there’s something comforting in reading about people getting what they deserved and earned, even in a work of fiction where the people aren’t any more real than I allow them to be.

This follow-up is just as good and fun as its prequel. The writing is witty, and Giffin manages to link the smallest details of the two stories together and address the things that you wanted to know in the first. I didn’t think I’d like Something Blue as much as Something Borrowed, because I didn’t think a story told from the point of view of someone so shallow and selfish as Darcy could be as rewarding as rooting for good girl Rachel was in the first. But as I read along (and I read it all in one sitting, not wanting to put it down), I realised I liked this novel more than its predecessor, not simply because it tied up the loose ends and settled all the characters and their actions in the end, but because it was more satisfying to see Darcy redeem herself than it was to see Rachel grow a thicker skin and go for what she wanted. I was sad when it ended because I didn’t want to be finished with these characters. I kind of hope there are some other related characters Giffin could spin another story around just to keep these characters alive in the imagination, but even if she doesn’t, I’ve been left satisfied enough.