What keeps you up all night?
They were high-school sweethearts who hadn’t seen each other for seventeen years. And suddenly they’re in front of each other—in a tiny sweet shop in the middle of nowhere. Neither can quite believe it. These days, Petra works in London as a jeweller while Arlo has left his rock-and-roll lifestyle for the wilds of North Yorkshire. Out of the blue, their paths have just crossed. But for first love to have a second chance both must put their pasts to bed. However, there are skeletons in Arlo’s closet which keep him up at night. And just what is it that causes Petra to sleepwalk?
I should have known that reading a British book from 2008 would be a trip, but I didn’t know how much I would be in for. Pillow Talk follows Petra Flint, a jewellery designer who struggles with sleepwalking, and Arlo Savidge, a rockstar turned music teacher with insomnia. The story is about how these two were teenage sweethearts (though this is a stretch but who am I to argue with the synopsis ) and how their lives reconnect years later as adults.
All I can say is this is a bizzarre little book. Firstly I’m willing to admit that perhaps deep UK (white) culture (from the 2000s) is so far removed from the media I regularly consume that I found some of the lines not only unfamiliar but absolutely strange – so strange that they become what I assumed was unintentionally hilarious.
Absolutely nothing in my life could have prepared me for reading, “the older girls were shaking their heads, while hormones and concern for political injustice sprang real tears to their eyes.” Like what? Is this a common occurrence when listening to a secondary school band at fifteen? Must have missed this pivotal adolescent moment at my alma mater. I was also honoured to read “the lovely strong forearms of his burgeoning masculinity” to describe a 17 year old. That took me right out. And mind you, these are all in the first 30 pages or so of this book
“-And he bought me a pen from Tiffany and red roses on Valentine’s Day. But all that is relatively easy if you can afford it. Back then Arlo only had pocket money and yet he created something unique and beautiful and precious. And Lasting.”
― Freya North, Pillow Talk.
Outside the odd little sentences (and spelling “hello” as “hullo”), the way it’s technically written also leaves a lot to be desired. We jump from first to third POV, past to present tense, past to present timelines with no rhyme, rhythm or reason. And I would have given it a pass if it felt like a cool stylistic choice but it just feels random.
But even if that isn’t off putting enough, the pacing and the events themselves are just a bit… Somehow. The book is a bit slow for the amount of things going on, and the amount of things going on almost seem irrelevant to the plot. They are so inconsequential and anticlimactic. The reasons surrounding each of their afflictions are resolved with a shallowness that seems disproportionate to the amount of time we spend building them up. They almost feel like an after thought honestly.
“The beauty of your oldest, closest friend is that, in a crisis, she has no compulsion to do anything other than come to your rescue.”
― Freya North, Pillow Talk.
Also, I think the romances I’ve been reading recently are more intense and have a lot more going on with the main characters and how they interact. However, in Pillow Talk, the main characters meet like 106 pages into it, after trying to gaslight me that they were soulmates as teenagers. But don’t get your hopes up. It’s brief and then they meet again after like 50 pages give or take.
The story builds upon the fact that when they were younger they watched each other make music and do poetry in between classes were they really don’t talk to each other. The book tries to convince me they loved each other then and that meeting seventeen years later and rekindling that love is some sort of fate. But sadly I wasn’t all the way convinced. At all. The emotional investment feels assumed rather than built. Like It’s not instalove (a trope I just do not vibe with) but it is adjacent enough to make me roll eyes.
“But I worked so hard at loving him.” “You worked too hard at loving him for too little return.”
― Freya North, Pillow Talk.
There’s also a heavy focus on Tanzanite, which I had never heard of before this book. If you are deeply passionate about gemstones, specifically Tanzanite, this might genuinely enhance your reading experience.
For me, though, this felt like a romance very much of its time. If you’re not a fan of how contemporary romance is written today , and perhaps also have a deep passion of Tanzanite ( a gemstone I had never heard of til I picked this up) you might actually enjoy this more than I did. Otherwise, I don’t know – 3/5 stars I guess.
“Better to be on your own than settling for so little.”
― Freya North, Pillow Talk.
