I’ll start off by saying I did not like this book. I wanted to like this book because the excerpt was about being a chocoholic, and I am a chocoholic. I don’t even think I love men as much as I LOVE chocolate (except my husband. I’d give up chocolate for him.)

But it’s hard to write about why you don’t like a book without ruining the book. So I’ll say, there are NO SPOILERS here. I won’t ruin the book in this review. But I might taint your opinion of it.

Problem #1: the cover. Don’t judge a book by its cover they say. But if you’ve studied graphic art or art in general, as I have, you would immediately notice the amateurish design of the cover of this book. Pink, fine. Heels, cute. Curlz font in over 40pt? Puh-lease!

Problem #2:This book wants to be as funny as Bridget Jones. It wants to be as in-touch as Jennifer Weiner. It’s not. The narration switches from emails, to diary entries, to regular fictional prose – and it does not do so seamlessly. It jumps around oddly. And the font is tiny. These 2 things made the book physically hard to read.

Problem #3: I was kind of hoping the book would be funny anecdotes and tales from the author’s own experiences with men. It wasn’t. It’s an actual fiction novel with a plot. The part you are supposed to like best about fiction, I think, is the protagonist – the main character. You want to take their side and see them through better and worse. But this main character needed to be slapped. She needed a close girlfriend to say, “You put yourself in these situations, and you can only blame yourself. Grow ‘a pair’ or stop whining.” She’s the kind of female I don’t like, smart-brained but weak-minded. If you haven’t figured out by age 29 that your life is a result of choices, and poor choices often lead to unhappiness, then you won't be happy as a teacher, lawyer, wife – or many of the other things this lead female wants to be.

Problem #4: So she makes these bad choices, and suddenly there’s a BIG choice you aren’t even quite ready for her to make yet, and the book skips over all the details. It has 2 sentences about this choice, and then moves on to the consequences the next day. And as a reader I said, “Wait, what just happened? You’re not gonna tell me how/why this happened?!”

Problem #5: Misc Long Quotes. Did someone tell the author to add 10 pages to the book and she did so by throwing in quotes from other sources? Songs, articles, talk shows – get your verbatim quotes here! Even movie plot outlines… very odd.

Problem #6: The book ends with a Glossary of Kiwi expressions, because the story takes place in New Zealand. But many of the phrases are expressions we would use and don’t belong here without talking down to the reader. And this section is full of justification and typographical errors. It made my college-English-degree eyes hurt.