Not the Girl You Marry by Andie J. Christopher

Not the Girl You Marry by Andie J. Christopher

Narrated by January LaVoy

It’s my fault. I should have known that the premise of Not the Girl You Marry was not going to work that well for me. I guess I was hoping that the blurb was not entirely accurate or that this was going to be one of those times when something I thought could not work actually did. But still. My bad.

The book is well written, there are plenty of things to like but in the end I could not get over the insurmountable hurdle of the male lead’s behaviour. I found myself increasingly disappointed by him and less than three hours before the end of the book I pulled the pin. I just couldn’t do it. Because I know this book ends in a HEA and I didn’t believe Jack deserved one. At least, not with Hannah. So my decision not to finish was more about that than anything else.

This is one of those books where if the premise works for the listener it will be a raging success.

Here is the blurb:

“How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days gets a millennial makeover in this romantic comedy by USA Today bestselling author Andie J. Christopher.

Jack Nolan is a gentleman, a journalist, and unlucky in love. His viral success has pigeon-holed him as the how-to guy for a buzzy, internet media company instead of covering hard-hitting politics. Fed up with his fluffy articles and the app-based dating scene as well, he strikes a deal with his boss to write a final pièce de résistance: How to Lose a Girl. Easier said than done when the girl he meets is Hannah Mayfield, and he’s not sure he wants her to dump him.

Hannah is an extremely successful event planner who’s focused on climbing the career ladder. Her firm is one of the most prestigious in the city, and she’s determined to secure her next promotion. But Hannah has a bit of an image problem. She needs to show her boss that she has range, including planning dreaded, romantic weddings. Enter Jack. He’s the perfect man to date for a couple weeks to prove to her boss that she’s not scared of feelings.

Before Jack and Hannah know it, their fake relationship starts to feel all too real—and neither of them can stand to lose each other.”

I’m not a big fan of deception as a trope. I love a fake relationship but where the deception is perpetrated on one main character by the other? Not so much. In this case, there is deception galore. Jack is lying to Hannah. Hannah is lying to Jack. And, of course, they are both lying to themselves.

The latter three deceptions were fairly easy for me to forgive. Sure Hannah is, just like Jack, pursuing a romantic relationship under false pretences and not sharing that information with the other party. However, there the similarities end.

Jack’s deception involves him being purposely cruel, unkind and, occasionally creepy. His deception is destined to end in humiliation for Hannah. How does he think it’s going to go when his article laying the whole thing out is published? (I don’t know if it does come out. I didn’t get that far. My point really is that he intended for it to come out. That was enough.) Hannah, her friends, her colleagues and random strangers on the street will know that Jack dated her in order to humiliate and abuse her. So, his terrible treatment of her will then be something to embarrass and hurt her in perpetuity – because the internet is forever. And I just couldn’t get behind that. I tried. But I couldn’t.

Jack’s reasoning is that in the past he has blown career opportunities for a relationship and in the end he’s still lost the girl. So this time he’s choosing his career, even though he hates himself for it. The thing is, I think that’s the wrong calculus. He’s not choosing his career over Hannah. He’s choosing his career over his ethics. But he chose to throw another person under a bus and that spoke to me of his judgement and morals and none of those things were good. How is it heroic to choose to hurt someone else?

Hannah had been hurt before by awful men and Jack was just another one. In some ways his behaviour is even worse than the others because he’s doing it for career advancement and not even because he thinks that kind of behaviour is okay.

I liked Hannah very much. She’s prickly and well-armoured but has a very soft core. Jack did not take care of it and I could not forgive him for that. She deserved better.

The narration is superb. January LaVoy is brilliant, with a wonderfully deep husky hero voice and a wide variety of other voices and accents. Her timing is excellent. After a couple of recent listens where insufficient space was left between sentences and paragraphs it was truly a delight to listen to Ms. LaVoy’s impeccable pacing.

If anyone was going to convince me to keep going it would have been Ms. LaVoy’s narration. She kept me listening after my initial discomfort with the premise and quite a way into Jack’s increasingly desperate attempts to get Hannah to dump him. But when Jack’s behaviour bled into truly humiliating and douchey even January LaVoy couldn’t keep me listening.

I feel bad about this because there are things in the book to enjoy. There is some very hot sex and sparkling humour, a great female friendship and, as I said, Hannah is wonderful. But the premise is the necessary thread that goes throughout the whole book. This trope is not my jam and in hindsight, I ought not to have accepted the book for review.

Kaetrin

Note: DNF is reader-speak for Did Not Finish.


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