Rating: 
Summary: This Book Spoke To Me
Review: I loved this book and I was genuinely saddened when I finished it because I did not want to end my time with the characters. The honest, down-to-earth, yet incredibly witty way that Ms. Bank writes really resonated with me...I felt like she was expressing all the confusion and maddeneningly unrelenting self-examination that women of our time go through.Thank you for writing this book, Ms. Bank...please put something else out there soon.
Rating: 
Summary: Warning: Majorly overhyped
Review: I bought this on the strength of a magazine review and Amazon's own positive customer reviews. Boy, was I disappointed. I expected humor and wit at least on par with Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones' Diary. What I got was a series of disjointed short stories about lead character Jane Rosenal and her none too amusing love life. (The stories keep leaping back and forth in time from Jane's childhood to adulthood. Why? A straightforward chronology would have been less confusing; more preferable.) I liked the first story best, when Jane is a little girl befriending her brother's girlfriend on a family holiday. It's thoughtful and sets a tone that unfortunately the rest of the book doesn't match. The rest of the stories seem gimmicky, or at worst, like half-baked short-story ideas from a writing workshop stretched out to fill pages. Read Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones books instead for great laughs and more insight, or turn to fellow Brits Nick Hornby or Alex Garland for cutting-edge Gen-X fiction. What can I say? At least these authors have real talent.
Rating:
Summary: I loved it!
Review: I felt like I was reading the story of my life with certain identifying details altered. Ms. Bank's analyses of different relationships rang very true. Her writing is masterly as is her command of the comic. I've recommended it to people who've since thanked me for steering them toward this well written and insightful volume.
Rating:
Summary: Married is Better!
Review: Towards the summer, when thoughts turn to sun and sand, there are ceratin titles which are published that are geared towrds the twenty and thirty something dating scene. In 1999, two books were published shortly after the success of Bridget Jones' Diary which meet this criteria. They were Otherwise Engaged and The Girl's Guide to to Hunting and Fishing. Although I read all three of the above mentioned books I really would recommend Girl's Guide to the other two. Written as a collection of interweaving and interlocking stories all but one entranced me and had my fingers hurriedly turning the pages. The central character isJane Rosenal who we are first introduced to in the story Advanced Beginners, when she is 14 and her 20 year old brother brings home his 28 year old girlfriend. And from there we follow Jane as she lives with a considerably older man to the title story where Jane finds love when she gives up playing by the "rules." This book was filled with a good dose of humor and wit and at times, great poignancy. I imagine that many will be waiting to read Banks' next book -I will most probably be first in line.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: I absolutely loved this book. I cried and laughed and fell in love with the realness of Jane. I read this book all day today and had to go to a dinner party before I finished the last 15-20 pages. I found myself wanting to come home early to find out the ending. I am ready for the author's next book.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: I absolutely loved this book. I cried and laughed and fell in love with the realness of Jane. I read this book all day today and had to go to a dinner party for the holiday before I finished the last 15-20 pages. I found myself wanting to come home early to find out the ending. I am ready for the author's next book.
Rating: 
Summary: Bitterly Dissappointing
Review: This could quite possibly be the worst book I have ever read from cover to cover. Perhaps I fell prey to all of the hype and my expectations were too high. The characters were flat, emotionless, and I never cared at all what was going to happen next. Personally, I am sorry that trees had to die in order for this drivel to be printed.
Rating:
Summary: I love her
Review: A wickedly funny, fabulously entertaining read. Characters are deep, witty and the dialouge is ripping. A must for women of all ages.
Rating: 
Summary: It was nearly good
Review: I loved, really loved the first chapter. It was funny, clever,insightful, true. It made me rush through the rest of the book,hoping to go enjoy the narrator's company as she experienced all the rush and disapointments of love. The smart-[alec] I fell in love with in the first chapter was never found again. She disappeared. If that's supposed to illustrate the disapointments of adulthood, well done.. but we were left with a pale, mausade main character. I'm not sure whether the relationship with the older man wasn't fleshed out because the author had no idea what that would really be like, or because it would be distateful to actually give us the details we craved. The book kept skimming along with some meaningful commentary, but altogether an uninteresting incohesive plot--ultimately, the relationships just weren't fleshed out enough... Not with her brother, not with her father, not with her lovers, not with her life... One way to evaluate a book is to see if you dread finishing it, because you'll have to say goodbye... I was left with so many questions at the end--I didn't really know this character. These gaps didn't feel like the holes we all have in the fabrics of our lives, but the holes left by a negligent author who hadn't thought of all the angles...
Rating: 
Summary: A delightful surprise
Review: Melissa Bank writes a wise and humorous book about what we all experience...insecurities. The narrator, Jane Rosenal, travels through each chapter of this book, trying to find success at love and work by changing and adapting herself, so that the man in her life, or the editor at her job, will find her desirable, smart or attractive. In the end, she realizes that what made others interested in the first place, was her, Jane, just being herself and the changes she made, made her less attractive, not more. Each chapter is a short story that blended together make a book. The last chapter is absolutely the best and everyone will see a bit of themselves in it. A very nice, thoughtful book, well written and easy to read.
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