Getting Personal

Rating:
Summary: Fun chick-lit (3 1/2 stars)...
Review: Getting Personal is a fun Brit chick-lit about three single Londoners who decide to set each other up on blind dates using the ultimate tool of desperation: personal ads. Ruby wants to find a handsome, rich and intelligent man to show off to her co-worker and ex-boyfriend at a party. Lou wants to find the gorgeous man she ran into on the morning tube to work. And Martin wants to find a woman who is neither psychotic nor clingy. What transpires is a humorous story full of the pitfalls in the dating world that single people know all too well. There are some interesting twists throughout the novel.

Getting Personal is a fun, no-fuss read that I enjoyed on my train ride to visit friends and family for Christmas. I was entertained throughout the dreadful trip. Chris Manby regales us with an addicting story full of British humor. However, there are some areas that should have been better. The characters are a little too neurotic at times. Ruby annoyed me often with her self-pity and desperation. And I sort of saw the developments in her love life coming from the very beginning. And, like another reviewer pointed out, there are some loose ends throughout the story -- some twists that seemed intrusive and out of place. The reader always gets a clue or a foreshadow of something important that will happen ahead in the story. I guess Ms. Manby forgot to do that. There should have been some fact-checking in some areas of the novel as well. Also, the novel is unnecessarily long. It should have been at least one hundred pages shorter. After all, this isn't a deep, literary novel. Other than that, this is a great read. It is not as clever as the Bridget Jones books, but it is entertaining nevertheless. I recommend Getting Personal if you're in the bargain for a British chick-lit.

Rating:
Summary: Correction to Previous Entry
Review: In London, singles Ruby Taylor, Louisa Capshaw, and Martin Ashcroft attend a wedding where they learn that the bride and groom met through a personal ad at the Telegraph. The three friends wonder why not one of them ever meet their significant other so they form the Lonely Hearts Club and agree to try ads. Lou writes one for Martin; Martin scribes one for Ruby; and Ruby creates one for Lou.

As the ads are answered, Ruby detests anyone going out with Martin. He feels the same way about those blind dates taking out Ruby. While Lou finds her dates lacking, Ruby and Martin become jealous as each one now knows who their significant other is, but will either risk a cherished friendship to become potentially friend and lover or will both hide their heart from the other? As for Lou she tries a different path for her quest for happiness.

Chris Manby allows her readers to get personal with the three musketeers as each seeks love. Though mostly a light romp, the amusing story line contains moments of pathos and weird twists especially concerning Lou and the stranger on the train. Chick lit fans will enjoy this tale because the Lonely Heart Club members provide a peppery plot.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: peppery chick lit tale
Review: In London, singles Ruby Taylor, Louisa Capshaw, and Martin Ashcroft attend a wedding where they learn that the bride and groom met through a personal ad at the Telegraph. The three friends wonder why not one of them ever meet their significant other so they form the Lonely Hearts Club and agree to try ads. Lou writes one for Martin; Martin scribes one for Ruby; and Ruby creates one for Lou.

As the ads are answered, Ruby detests anyone going out with Martin. He feels the same way about those blind dates taking out Ruby. While Lou finds her dates lacking, Ruby and Martin become jealous as each one now knows who their significant other is, but will either risk a cherished friendship to become potentially friend and lover or will both hide their heart from the other? As for Lou she tries a different path for her quest for happiness.

Chris Manby allows her readers to get personal with the three musketeers as each seeks love. Though mostly a light romp, the amusing story line contains moments of pathos and weird twists especially concerning Lou and the stranger on the train. Chick lit fans will enjoy this tale because the Lonely Heart Club members provide a peppery plot.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Correction to Previous Entry
Review: Just finished reading the last two chapters.
Would like to add that things are supposed to close naturally, not slapped together. Sure, we saw the wedding of the two coming up.
But think you really missed some possibilities in Lou. Find the fact that she ended up with that woman a little unplausible, as there was nothing previously stated to hint at her identity. And the inner journey from going straight to admitting you're not that way could have been portrayed with much more tenderness.
Admit it, the adoption and the lesbian were last minute stretchers...
KatB

Rating:
Summary: Um...
Review: Now, I definitely might be wrong, but I am fairly sure Barry Manilow didn't sing the Pina Colada song, someone named Rupert Somethingorother did, so unless there are TWO pina colada songs, which I just don't see, since the Pina Colada song was about meeting someone (his own wife!! SCANDAL!!) through online dating, maybe someone could have been a little bit more careful about fact checking.

I mean, did he WRITE the song or something? I know he writes that songs that make the whole world sing and whatnot, but I don't believe he penned this one. Sorry.

Oh, other than that, the book is several kinds of awful. Proceed with caution.

Rating:
Summary: Lacks Planning
Review: This is a pretty decent premise, and I can ALMOST ignore the fact that the author is so desperately trying to copy Helen Fielding's voice.

But the thing that absolutely KILLED me, the thing that almost made it so that I couldn't finish the book, was the fact that on page 157 the author finally decides to add the fact that one of the characters is adopted! You do not set up this emotionally vulnerable character who is having trouble with establishing meaningful relationships, and then half way into the freaking book go "Oh, yeah? Did I mention she's adopted?"

And that another character's hints that she's possibly a lesbian, never properly followed up on. Either use it, or lose it.

Heard of the saying don't put a gun on the page if you don't plan to use it? Well, the reverse is true as well. If you're going to shoot the gun, you have to put it on the freaking page!!!

I think, given a couple of re-writes, a little personal discovery, and some planning; this could've been a decent novel. As it stands, it seems as though the author had a semi-reasonable idea, and threw in a bunch of half-baked crap to bulk it up. I wouldn't have continued reading it, but I paid $13 for the freaking thing.
KatB

Rating:
Summary: Flat out hilarious
Review: This is one of those books that hooks you from the first sentence and has you turning the pages in a flurry.

Martin, Lou and Ruby are all useless at picking partners so place personal ads for each other with hilarious results.
Martin is a loveable, sweet, very realistic character and you root for him all the way in his quest for love and personal fulfillment. Lou and Ruby have their own complex hang ups - everyone will be able to relate.

There are so many reasons this book is fantastic but the main one is it is madly funny. It made me laugh out loud on the subway, on the bus, in a cafe. It is spot on, well observed, pee in your pants hilarious. Funnier than Marian Keyes and all the other chick lit pretenders. This is the real McCoy.

Rating:
Summary: Cute but stretched out...
Review: This was a really good book. Some parts of the plot were so obvious,but only occur in the last 5 pages or so. Like others have said,I think that Ruby's adoption was just a way to lengthen the story,because once I got to that part,it went really slow. I didn't really see the relation between that and the whole idea of the book. I would have loved to cut out some of the adoption parts and have seen more of what happens to Lou in the end! There's only about one sentence that refers to her and the guy she ended up with but that's all. Besides that,it is a good read,and I like how it's essentially 3 stories in one (Ruby's,Lou's and Martin's).

Rating:
Summary: I can't get over the mistakes...
Review: Your average Red Dress Ink offering...overall it's worth 3 stars for being mildly entertaining and mindless fluff, but I'm deducting another star for two egregious errors, since both the author and the editor should have known better. (Who edits this line, anyway? They're consistently awful.) One, Manby spells Elizabeth Bennet--the heroine of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and patron saint of chick lit heroines everywhere--as "Elizabeth Bennett." Two, she says that Barry Manilow sang the Pina Colada song. Wrong, it was Rupert Holmes. C'mon, this is basic cultural literacy.

Oh yeah, the plot has something to do with three friends setting each other up on dates. Get this one from the library, don't waste any money on it.