Yeong Kar Yan
The Good, The Bad and the Dumped by Jenny Colgan, at first glance, promises “The perfect sun-lounger read,” and it does seem rather exciting, going by the cheery yellow cover and Twitter-like birds perched atop branches with pink little leaves.
Yet just a few chapters into “The Good, the Bad and the Dumped” and the reader will probably be filled with a sense of disillusionment, feeling increasingly cheated.
One main reason may be the misleading blurb on the back of the book – and that’s not counting the fact that they actually got the protagonist’s last name wrong as well (i.e. Sutherland on the back, Fairweather in the book, right on the first page).
Excerpt: “Posy is delighted when Matt proposes – on top of a mountain, in a gale, in full-on romantic mode. But a few days later disaster strikes: he backs out of the engagement. Crushed and humiliated, Posy starts thinking. Why has her love life always ended in total disaster? Determined to discover how she got to this point, Posy resolves to get online and track down her exes. Can he learn from past mistakes? And what if she has let Mr Right slip through her fingers on the way?”
This is what really happened.
- Matt proposes to Posy (Ah, a true fact).
- She agrees, saying yes simply for the sake of it and probably in desperation to get hitched (marriage is always a good thing, innit?).
- She announces it to her best friend, Leah and sister, Fleur.
- Even they seem less than happy, expressing surprise in ways the author finds seemingly witty, that they never thought she was marriage material (Leah and Fleur bring in a very good point – Posy can’t even bring herself to mention the name of her last ex-boyfriend).
- Doubt sets in after some girl talk and a coincidental bump-in with a friend of her ex’s.
- Posy is plagued by thoughts of what-could-have-been(s) and how the grass may turn out to be greener on the other side (a clear indicator that she is not ready for marriage).
- She comes up with the genius idea of tracking down her ex-boyfriends through Facebook.
- The stunner: She lies to her fiancé, Matt, flying halfway round the world to Scotland to find Chris, her first boyfriend instead of looking for wedding venues which she promised to do.
- Her normal best friend, Leah, who deserves a boyfriend/marriage, accidentally spills the beans when she gets insanely drunk during Posy’s engagement party.
- That is when Matt asked for a break (not even dumping her yet), like any man in the right mind would do.
It’s obvious to whom that the book’s title refers to as the story pans out.
The dumped: Chris, her first relationship/love, as explained above
The bad: Adam, a man who she can’t seem to believe dated her for six months (supposedly once mysterious and hot. He falls a little on the hot-o-meter when Posy meets him again, what a surprise!)
The good: The third and last break-up that was apparently so painful and bad, her best friend Leah and sister, Fleur refers to this ex-boyfriend as Voldemort (also known as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in the Harry Potter series that I’d very much rather have picked up over the weekend).
The author banks on Voldemort to create suspense for the reader and it is only more than halfway through the book that you find out who he is. It would actually have worked except that readers will find hard to gather the stamina when they can barely relate to or sympathize with the character.
The plot is contrived as well and attempts to justify Posy’s paranoid behaviour to be the result of the recent divorce of her heartbroken American boss, Gavin, the loss of a father figure (who left for another woman when she was 8), and mainly, her psychotherapist mum who does not believe in the institution of marriage.
In all honesty, the concept of looking up your ex-boyfriends is fairly interesting and has potential for great laughs and entertainment. If only Jenny Colgan had stuck with what the blurb says…
While the book has the occasional witty one-liners and sometimes amusing dialogue (in the form of Facebook updates and return comments), it’s not enough to save the book.
Perhaps, this is just simply not one of Jenny Colgan’s best works.
You may want to try reading Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend instead, a 2009 release, for which the writer has received positive reviews or her first few works, Amanda’s Wedding and Talking to Addison which propelled her to fame.
Title: The Good, The Bad and the Dumped
Author: Jenny Colgan
Genre: Fiction
Publication: Sphere
Rating: ★★☆☆☆