The Idea of You is an age gap celebrity romance where the heroine is older than the hero. I didn’t mind the age-gap portion (in fact I appreciate a book where the heroine is the older one), but I had a lot of issues with how the heroine’s relationship with the hero would and did impact her daughter. Also I was pretty surprised by the ending which is very different from the movie the book is based on.
click for spoilers
This book does not have a HEA or HFN.
Solene Marchand is a 39-year-old single mom and co-owner of an art gallery in Los Angeles. She takes her 12-year-old daughter, Isabelle, and her friends to a concert and meet and greet for August Moon, a popular British boy band, where she meets Hayes Campbell, the 20-year-old founder of the band. The two engage in some harmless flirting and Solene is surprised when she gets back to LA that Hayes has tracked her down and wants to meet for drinks.
A fair amount of this book is Solene dating Hayes and questioning if their relationship is a good idea since, as she repeatedly states, she’s old enough to be his mother. Hayes has no concerns about the age difference and this is definitely a “he fell first” book. As I mentioned, I was absolutely fine with the age gap. Both main characters are consenting adults and there’s no power dynamic there that made me feel that Solene had some kind of advantage over Hayes.
I also liked that Solene really wasn’t concerned about her physical appearance with regard to the age gap. This had the potential to be a book where Solene frets over her cellulite or wrinkles, and that really didn’t happen. Solene is confident in her appearance and it felt empowering.
A lot of my issues stem from the fact that Solene is hiding her relationship with Hayes from Isabelle, who thinks he’s a client. While I don’t think a twelve-year-old is entitled to know who her mom is dating, the dynamic here is slightly different. Isabelle is in love with Hayes from afar, the way many preteen girls are. She dreams of marrying him someday. So the fact that Solene is in a relationship with him is inevitably going to crush her when she finds out, even if her dreams might be unrealistic. Also there are plenty of moments when Solene and Hayes are in public together—laying low but certainly being photographed together is possible. At one point a friend recognizes Solene from a picture where she’s facing away from the camera. If I had an issue with how much Isabelle would be hurt by her mom’s relationship with Hayes, I had a much bigger issue with the fact that Isabelle might find out about it from TMZ.
I was incredibly sensitive to the fact that Isabelle would be hurt by her mom’s relationship with her crush, but even more so with the fact that her mom was potentially hurting her more by lying about the nature of her relationship with Hayes. It made me really dislike Solene at certain times.
Hayes himself doesn’t have a ton of depth. There’s a mention of him liking older women, and he admits to Solene that when he was 14 he slept his bandmate’s 19 year old sister (he says consensually, but maybe he should unpack that in therapy IDK), but that plotline around his attraction to older women went nowhere. Mostly he exists as a vehicle for Solene to find herself and celebrity her sexuality as a middle aged woman.
A lot was made of Solene being wealthy, French and part of the art world (actually I enjoyed the tidbits about her art career) and part of me wondered if that was just who she was as a character or if it was meant as some sort of justification for why Hayes would want her. She’s French! She’s posh! At one point she describes Vegas as too American and too fat.
The thing that really frustrated me though was the ending. I went into this book expecting one thing and got another, which meant all the pain Solene and Hayes (and eventually Isabelle) go through feels like it was for naught. I hadn’t seen the movie that’s based on this book when I read it, but I understand that the ending is different.
I really struggled with the grade for this review, as I did like reading about an older heroine and I liked that she was confident in her body and sexuality. I didn’t love how she treated her daughter at all, and the end really made me frustrated—like I experienced vicarious anxiety and conflict for nothing. I would really caution romance readers regarding this book, especially if they come to this after watching the movie. You might not get what you were looking for.
The movie version does correct a lot of things and is the rare case where the movie is better than the book. For one, they age Isabelle up to 17 and make her a former not current fan of the band. They also give Hayes more depth and age him up to 24. The movie also spends more time reflecting on the bullshit double standard that is a 40-year-old woman dating a 24-year-old pop star. If the ages were reversed and Hayes was 40 and famous, literally no one would bat an eyelash at him dating someone 16 years younger. It would almost be expected.
The ending of the movie is also better.
So if the idea of The Idea of You intrigues you, check out the movie, not the book.
