You walk into your favorite independent bookstore looking for something fun and frothy, but also provocative, for these last lingering days of summer. Browsing the new releases section, your eyes alight on "Million Little Mistakes" by Minnesota Public Radio/Public Radio International producer Heather McElhatton. Should you buy this book? It looks like the perfect read for a day at the lake. But everybody else is reading Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. Do you dare try something different, a novel that includes instructions on how to read it?
If you decide to take a chance and purchase "Million Little Mistakes," continue reading.
If you decide to read "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" instead, skip the rest of this review.
"Million Little Mistakes," McElhatton's sequel to "Pretty Little Mistakes," is a "choose your own adventure" interactive novel for the chick lit set. "You," a protagonist somewhat reminiscent of a character in a Candace Bushnell novel, win $22 million in the Big Money Sucka! lottery. This brings you to the first decision of many, after which the novel branches out into approximately 50 different short stories, all about you and the mayhem that sudden wealth brings, starting with -- do you keep your job, or quit?
From that point onward, you are on your own, deciding between two options at the close of each chapter, making choices that propel the story one way or another, all the way to its ultimate outcome -- which is always, as in the real world, death, although, one story ends with you becoming a vampire.
Along the way, your decisions invariably result in outrageous, over-the-top adventures in exotic locales, such as being kidnapped by Somali pirates, squaring off against evil spirits in New Orleans, or blowing up the United Kingdom from your underground bunker -- although, in certain scenarios, you lose all your money through mismanagement, chicanery or outright theft by others. But even then, all is not lost: You may spend the rest of your days playing violin for the Duluth Symphony, or, better yet, living on a remote island off the coast of Ireland with the love of your life and a passel of children, poor, but content.
While "Million Little Mistakes" is the kind of book that is perhaps best enjoyed in small doses, McElhatton explores existential themes in an entertaining manner that, amid the laughs, inevitably prompts the reader to ponder: Can money buy you happiness?
Claire Kirch is a Duluth-based writer.
