No Strings Attached

No Strings Attached

by Mina V. Esguerra

My blurb would go,

Carla Alejandro has no business turning thirty. Not only does she not look like she's entering her third decade, she's also [still!] constantly being offered unsolicited advice by her family - not to mention her incorrigible friends. Worse, everyone keeps rooting for her to settle with a stable banker-type ASAP. A few months before her birthday, however, she meets the Dante del Rosario, who does wushu, lectures college kids on Rizal, and happens to be stubbornly attracted to the very confused Carla. Prince Charming, true, only he happens to be almost five years younger than her. What's Carla to do when everyone tells her she and Dante aren't a good fit? Will she recognize her relationship with him as the fling everybody tells her it is, or will she push their connection to the next level?

I haven't read anything remotely romantic in recent months - aside from that reskim of Anna Ishikawa's epic Glamour Games. I told myself I'd start reading "smarter stuff" that dealt with facts of the head rather than imaginings of the heart. Although I'd sworn off romcom paperbacks though, this book called out to me. I kept willing myself to walk past its displayed copies on the NBS SMNorth shelf - and actually succeeded for a coupla months - before I caved in. And gawd, was it worth the surrender.

The funny thing is you'd think I wouldn't be able to relate to the heroine at all. The novel ends with her turning thirty, and well, I just turned 'the big two-oh' today. But what bridges the decade-long age gap is her main issue with her friends and her family, which I share. She's always been told what to do, and although I can't argue the same for myself, we both feel a sense of being caged into a restricted life, caged in because there are too many people looking after us, too many people telling us what not to do. So yeah, I can relate to Carla Alejandro. And for the record, I still think she's immature.

I love Dante though - oh, wait, the Dante del Rosario. [It's funny how my favorite leading men have names like Dante and Lucas. Is this Filipino machismo on full throttle or something?] If he were real, and I were a woman in his mother's company, I'd skip coffee break to spy on him, too. Like the blurb says, however, he's seemingly 'too good to be true'. Although he attempts to explain himself, I never fully understood what first attracted him to Carla. That little loophole there could be because the novel's written in first-person POV, but anyway, irrelevant. He's still hot.

Mary and Tonio I love dearly - although I refuse to comment on the latter's name. I love how NSA's in medias res, and I love the pace, the plot movement, the character development. I love how Carla's issues with one person leads to a conflict with another person, and I love how she bottles all her problems up - one surefire way of having a sparks-filled climax. I love how you root for the protagonist despite her obvious need for anger management, and I love how there's no "bad wolf". In the end the antagonists are all just really nice people, who, in their efforts to make other people's lives better, mess up the status quo. I love that.

To close, here are some of my favorite bits from No Strings Attached:

Tonio's thoughts on relationships:

Relationships, he learned, would just end and he wasn't sure how it happened. If he stayed with one person long enough, she would either want more or want out. He couldn't predict when this would take place, so he just made sure to keep his "relationships" short. (p.54)

Carla's thoughts on dating:

Dating wasn't so scary after all; it just needed to be done right. Do things that you'll enjoy, and if you're lucky you'll find a person who'll enjoy them too, if only because you were together. (p.57)

Dante to Carla:

"Carla, did I tell you that sometimes I think I made you up?" (p.93)

"You don't see why you're perfect," Dante said, taking my face in his hands and quickly kissing my forehead. "It's okay. It's probably part of your charm." (p.94)

Carla's AH-moments:

Apparently, it was possible to walk around, just be me, and be wanted. I had spent most of my twenties wondering when I'd be comfortable in my own skin, and it just happened, right then - two weeks before my thirtieth birthday. (p.96)

Suddenly, I understood what Tonio meant now. The power was in being reading to walk away. Those guys who threw me looks but didn't say anything, I didn't have to pay them any attention. I didn't have to be nice and personable so a thirty-something guy would find me marriage-worthy. I didn't have to break out the fancy outfits to attract someone like Dante. I didn't have to do anything but be myself. (p.96)

Works Cited:

Esguerra, Mina V. No Strings Attached. Mandaluyong: Summit Books, 2010.

Photo Credits:

from Lee Mejia's bookblog, From Page One

http://frompageone.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/no-strings-attached.jpg