A long, long time ago, I read Little Earthquakes by a relatively new author with a humorous last name (what can I say?  I was a lot younger!).  I loved it, and rapidly read her next novels – In Her Shoes, Good in Bed, Then Came You…  At some point, I became bored with the fairly consistent premise.  The main character, usually female, usually larger in size, usually angry in some way, started to get old.  So I put her down for a while.  For a long while.  But then this book showed up as an add on book for my subscription to Book of the Month, and the summary seemed interesting – the potential of being a good chick-lit book.

And that’s how it started.  I’m not a huge fan of influencers.  I don’t tend to understand why they’re looked at as something to be, but I was able to put that aside for a bit, to concentrate on a larger woman, navigating the internet and haters, building her life with her crafts, and a job she seems to like (though babysitting?  Really?  How old is she supposed to be again?), and living with a bisexual Indian woman.  I can’t identify with all of those things, but it wasn’t too difficult to suspend my own reality to enjoy what I was reading.  The reentry of an old friend who abused her so badly through high school was… interesting… and the way they connected was a little out there.

But still, I was willing to believe it.

Maybe the first indication that this wasn’t what I thought it would be was around the time that I realized that time had jumped forward with little to no notice – there’s no way that a woman like Drue would ask an ex-friend to be a bridesmaid with only weeks left to go in planning.  There’s references to dress shopping, catering, programs, multiple events that Daphne helps to plan…  there’s just now way that it was done in a few weeks.  She had to have been asked with at least a few months to go.  So that was a little jarring.  All of the sudden, we’re to the weekend of the wedding, the night before the wedding, and the big twist.

Stop reading here if you don’t want to know the twist…

There was a review I read on Goodreads when I finished the book, supremely irritated that I had wasted my time so massively.  First off, for me, instant romance is not something I remember of Ms. Weiner – it’s not something I expected.  Quickly following that by switching genres was interesting.  I honestly thought that it would be an interesting thing to follow the main character through the process of being a potential suspect.  How would she navigate everything with a questionable alibi?  How would the love interest fit in?

But no.  As the review I read said, it went off the rails but quick.  A buffoon of a detective, a roommate that magically shows up because she had a conference in a nearby city, a new lover hiding himself in a closet because he “just wanted to see the house he had grown up in” and thought he’d be the prime suspect…  And then the fact that those three join forces to SOLVE THE MYSTERY WITH NOTHING BUT THE INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA.  Who could the possible suspect be?  Simple, let’s look at Instagram and narrow a follower list down from 12,000!  Roommate suspects new lover, new lover suspects roommate, protagonist suspects new lover… Random characters all over the place with no purpose.

Another reviewer on Goodreads said that this book read as if the author wrote part one, put it in a drawer, got it stolen, and another person wrote a really crappy who dun it.

I couldn’t agree more.  I’m super frustrated with the book.  I was looking forward to seeing what would happen in part two, and I was so annoyed by all of the ridiculous, contrived plot points.  I’m giving it 1.5 stars here (2 on Goodreads) because maybe someone, somewhere, would like it.  I don’t think I’ll be coming back to Jennifer Weiner again for another number of years.