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A review by thephdivabooks
Not the Girl You Marry by Andie J. Christopher
2.0
A re-imagined How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days for the millennial generation, Andie J Christopher’s novel Not the Girl You Marry was a fun book to read, but one that ultimately altered too much of the central aspect to the original movie to work for me. Still, there’s a lot to enjoy here so let’s dive in!
I think there are lots of readers who will and have loved this book, and there were definitely things I liked about it as well. The movie is one of my favorites, and this book somehow managed to be almost exactly like it, and nothing like it at all. It was fun to see what aspects the author wanted to re-imagine. But that brings me to my first point, and one I couldn’t have anticipated until I saw how it played out…
The gender reversal of the original story is problematic--it was a fun idea, but one that did not work for me. When I read it, I didn't enjoy seeing Jack emulate the kind of toxic, misogynistic behavior that men treat their partners with all of the time. It wasn’t cute, or easy to stomach. The original worked because they both in some ways pretended to be into one another but didn’t realize that they actually were. Here, I struggled watching Hannah pretend that Jack’s bad behavior wasn’t a problem. I didn’t like watching her “play it cool” when he did truly appalling and damaging things. I also felt like I struggled to see Jack as the nice guy that he was, when he was treating Hannah so poorly. I was left with the impression that he thought way more highly of himself than he deserved.
Let’s talk about Hannah for a moment. I loved her, and I loved that the author chose to make her biracial. We saw quite a bit play out in terms of how some biracial women may experience dating, and I thought that as great to see in a main stream contemporary romance novel. Hannah herself is tough on the outside, but vulnerable inside. I also loved her friendship with Sasha, who was a really fun character as well. And I think these two are where Christopher’s writing really shone in this book! I also have to say, the event planning space was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the story of the wedding she was trying to help plan.
Many of these scenes were almost exactly out of the movie, and I think that’s where you see some readers saying this was too much like the film. I thought those scenes were a lot of fun. For instance, in the big party when everything comes to a head, I thought it was a fun re-telling of the original movie and I was so glad to see that scene included!
The problem is, I learned through reading this that delving into the mindset of the two main characters reveals a troubling aspect that the film was able to gloss over. Here we see chapter after chapter of how much these characters like one another and don’t want to go forward with their manipulation. And yet, they still do it. And somehow, seeing how much they didn’t want to do it took a bit of the fun out of the plot for me. The movie worked because neither had real feelings at first. They met because of their work assignments. Here, they actually meet and form a connection before their assignments, and it bothered me.
Let’s get to the
I think there are lots of readers who will and have loved this book, and there were definitely things I liked about it as well. The movie is one of my favorites, and this book somehow managed to be almost exactly like it, and nothing like it at all. It was fun to see what aspects the author wanted to re-imagine. But that brings me to my first point, and one I couldn’t have anticipated until I saw how it played out…
The gender reversal of the original story is problematic--it was a fun idea, but one that did not work for me. When I read it, I didn't enjoy seeing Jack emulate the kind of toxic, misogynistic behavior that men treat their partners with all of the time. It wasn’t cute, or easy to stomach. The original worked because they both in some ways pretended to be into one another but didn’t realize that they actually were. Here, I struggled watching Hannah pretend that Jack’s bad behavior wasn’t a problem. I didn’t like watching her “play it cool” when he did truly appalling and damaging things. I also felt like I struggled to see Jack as the nice guy that he was, when he was treating Hannah so poorly. I was left with the impression that he thought way more highly of himself than he deserved.
Let’s talk about Hannah for a moment. I loved her, and I loved that the author chose to make her biracial. We saw quite a bit play out in terms of how some biracial women may experience dating, and I thought that as great to see in a main stream contemporary romance novel. Hannah herself is tough on the outside, but vulnerable inside. I also loved her friendship with Sasha, who was a really fun character as well. And I think these two are where Christopher’s writing really shone in this book! I also have to say, the event planning space was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the story of the wedding she was trying to help plan.
Many of these scenes were almost exactly out of the movie, and I think that’s where you see some readers saying this was too much like the film. I thought those scenes were a lot of fun. For instance, in the big party when everything comes to a head, I thought it was a fun re-telling of the original movie and I was so glad to see that scene included!
The problem is, I learned through reading this that delving into the mindset of the two main characters reveals a troubling aspect that the film was able to gloss over. Here we see chapter after chapter of how much these characters like one another and don’t want to go forward with their manipulation. And yet, they still do it. And somehow, seeing how much they didn’t want to do it took a bit of the fun out of the plot for me. The movie worked because neither had real feelings at first. They met because of their work assignments. Here, they actually meet and form a connection before their assignments, and it bothered me.
Let’s get to the