Are You a Tattoo Person? Review of Heather Wardell’s “Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo”

Candice’s marriage hasn’t been the same since her in-laws died in a car accident coming back from buying her Christmas present. With her marriage on shaky ground and her husband leaving for six weeks to build houses out of the country Candice thinks she’ll have plenty of time to decide what she wants to do about her crumbling marriage. Instead she’s given a blast from the past, former lover Kegan shows up at the interior design firm Candice works for and she’s forced not only to work with the man who broke her heart, but to relive all those feelings that made her fall in love with him in the first place. Candice is forced to decide what she wants out of her life, to come to terms with her in-laws’ tragic deaths, and why she hasn’t gotten out of life what she expected to. As the newness has worn off her marriage and husband Ian seems farther away than ever before it only makes sense that she be drawn to Kegan: the man she was with in college, the man she was with when she had all the possibilities in the world.

The question is…which man will she chose?

While the plot of “Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo” seems spongey at best, there’s more to this book than just a woman trying to decide between two lovers. Wardell actually takes us deeper into out main character Candice’s mind than who she wants to sleep with. What, at first, appears to be a woman trying to decide between two men turns in to a story about a woman trying to find herself. A woman who is becoming disillusioned with who she’s become and realizing it’s never too late to reinvent yourself. As Candice discovers, just because she might not be a “tattoo person” doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to be.

Overall I was much more impressed with this book than I thought I’d be. Wardell has an excellent writing style that keeps you turning pages and wondering what will happen next while creating a main character you can really feel for. Unfortunately she doesn’t take quite as much time to let you love the rest of the characters. We see Ian mostly through emails he and Candice send back and forth, yet not all of his emails actually appear in the book. While some of them do others, the ones which seem to have the biggest impact on Candice, Wardell hasn’t bothered to write. Meaning we see Candice’s reaction without Ian’s words and are unable to decide what kind of man Ian really is. Kegan too, remains a little undeveloped. Wardell makes a big deal about him listening to Jazz music only in his car while hiding 80s cds in the glove compartment but then she drops the idea and never really ties it together with anything else. Candice’s friends fall a bit flat as well and it’s hard to tell whether she’s a thirty-something careerwoman or a twenty-something reliving the glory days of college with the typical hyper-emotional friend on one hand and the slutty go with the flow friend on the other.

I enjoyed the book and the emotion and honesty Wardell has put into Candice’s character made me glad to have picked it up. That being said if Wardell had given a little more attention to the other characters in her book she would have taken it to the next level. As far as short reads go it’s worth a try, and as it is available free as an ebook it’s worth downloading just in case.