There were things I both liked and disliked about this story. I liked Maria. I enjoy reading about strong female characters, and I thought she was indeed strong. She made a terrible mistake early on, but she refused to accept the results of this one choice as her fate. She set a goal of getting out of her fallen lifestyle and she never gave up. I also liked Ralf when he was introduced. Ralf was a complex character who was heavily laden with emotional and sexual baggage, but he was searching for some sort of salvation from himself even though he may not have realized it until he found it.

The story itself was hit-and-miss for me. I enjoyed reading about Maria's personal journey, but I didn't really understand how the S&M sexual experience was so profound to her life. I believe the point was that she is meant to find love within the context of a sexual relationship, or perhaps that she was meant to experience sex without the absense of love. So why did this require S&M exactly? It felt like it was there for token shock value to the reader, but frankly, it wasn't that shocking. Most romance novels are more graphic than this without including bondage or domination. It was more of a distraction to me than a contribution to the storyline.

*************spoiler alert***************

I liked the part at the end when Maria leaves Ralf's house and hopes that he will stop her from leaving. She hopes he'll stop her at the airport and then she hopes he'll stop her on the plane. It doesn't happen, but she keeps hoping for that perfect movie ending to her story. She reflects about how life doesn't turn out like the movies, and how one never really knows if the characters live happily ever after when the movie ends. This was such a simple concept, but it felt very real for me because I think that everyone hopes at one point or another that we'll get to experience our own version of a perfect movie ending sometime in our life. She wanted and hoped for that moment even as she told herself that life wasn't really like that. This felt very genuine and real.

So was it real then that she got her movie ending after all? I don't think so. It wasn't even her own moment...when Ralf finally shows up, he quotes a line from Casablanca. Her perfect movie ending was a copy of a moment experienced between two fictional characters in a movie, it wasn't really hers at all. At the very least, it should have been something more original.

**********end spoiler*************

Overall this was only ok for me. There was nothing really in the book that would make we want to either encourage or discourage a perspective reader. It was neither special or horrible, it was just right in the middle.

Brand	N/A
Rating	4.4 (5593 ratings)
Price	$12.79
Category	Ancient & Medieval Literature

Eleven Minutes: A Novel (P.S.)