Lisa of Troy's Reviews > Funny Story

Came for diabolical vengeance and steam but got a boring, watered down therapy session

The local librarian, Daphne Vincent, is happily engaged to Peter Collins. Until the eve of his bachelor night when Petey unceremoniously dumps Daphne for his bestie, Petra. Also, heartbroken is Miles, Petra’s boyfriend. Daphne now needs a place to stay, and Miles just so happens to have a slot available. To get back at Peter and Petra, the two decide to “fake date.”

Funny Story had potential for some Jerry Springer like drama. Do not dump librarians. They read lots of stories and have plenty of material to work with.

Take, for example, our villain, Peter. He is a software person, and say he has a keylogger program on Daphne’s computer. Daphne creates some very interesting stories, googles “pregnancy” and “STD testing” and tells Miles how much “better” he is than Peter. Perhaps Daphne gets drunk, googles “hottest people on GoodReads” and wakes up with a few more bookish friends. Or she walks by Peter’s gym, licking an ice cream cone, only she’s too enthusiastic and the ice cream falls to the concrete sidewalk. She smiles and laughs genuinely while Peter runs over, offering to buy her another cone, but Daphne lowers her voice and says in a sultry tone, “No need. I get all the ice cream I need for free,” as she walks away.

But instead of bad librarian, this book went into some misguided attempt to give the characters backstory with characters excruciatingly overexplaining their feelings. The book just plain didn’t bring the fun. Where is our guilty pleasure?

Just for the record, Anne Elliot is the Jane Austen character that I most relate to. To pick a character from P&P is just too pedestrian, darling.

Lacking creativity, lame, tame, and too PG. Needs a bit more May Cobb.

*Thanks, NetGalley, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and unbiased opinion.

How much I spent:
Electronic text – Free/Nada/Zilch through NetGalley provided by publisher

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