Review The Bro-Magnet by Lauren Baratz Logstead
Women have been known to lament, “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” For Johnny Smith, the problem is, “Always a Best Man, never a groom.” At age 33, housepainter Johnny has been Best Man eight times. The ultimate man’s man, Johnny loves the Mets, the Jets, his weekly poker game, and the hula girl lamp that hangs over his basement pool table. Johnny has the instant affection of nearly every man he meets, but one thing he doesn’t have is a woman to share his life with, and he wants that desperately. When Johnny meets District Attorney Helen Troy, he decides to renounce his bro-magnet ways in order to impress her. With the aid and advice of his friends and family, soon he’s transforming his wardrobe, buying throw pillows, ditching the hula girl lamp, getting a cat and even changing his name to the more mature-sounding John. And through it all, he’s pretending to have no interest in sports, which Helen claims to abhor. As things heat up with Helen, the questions arise: Will Johnny finally get the girl? And, if he’s successful in that pursuit, who will he be now that he’s no longer really himself?
So I’ve had this on my list for a while and I kept going back and forth with it, wanting to read it, getting excited about it and not liking it. I kept going back and forth with the novel, and I just could not bring myself to read it until earlier this week. There was some major hooplah about the book so I finally decided after some starts and stops to give it a try.
It was funny. Parts of it were hilarious, but I found most of it exceedingly predictable and 3 stooge-ish. Granted if you’re looking for a funny romance novel from the guys POV where the mans man, decides to change everything about himself in order to try to please a woman because he’s going through his midlife crisis, its exactly what you are looking for. Its simple. Its a simple book, with a simple easy premise and simple characters who have simple motivations.
Its funny, kind of cute, and well, for me, boring. I think its boring. I want something more than just cheap and simple and easy.
However given that this is a self published work, its pretty perfect. The editing was great, the formatting was fantastic, and it was a complete work. I just didn’t like it. I thought it was entirely too simple and easy.
Overall Rating: C
