Worst Date Ever
Melodie Campbell
Rapid Read Series
Raven Books
September 5, 2017
Blurb: Jennie has been a widow for two years. Her twelve-year-old son thinks it’s about time she started dating, and so does her best friend, Angela. So with Angela’s help, Jennie signs up to an online dating site. Within hours, she has several dates lined up for the week. Surely there will be one Prince Charming in the bunch. And if not, it’s only one date, right? How bad could it be?
Internet dating is the current big thing to have an unmarried character delve into whether on tv, in movies or novels. Due to the prevalence of internet dating, any book (novella in this case) using it as a major plot point really needs to strive to be unique.
Worst Date Ever unfortunately hasn’t done much to be unique except for perhaps the last date. Now, if the last date had actually been the second date and Jennie had several dates with him, perhaps this novella could have risen above average, but it didn’t.
Most romantic comedy novels are incorporating internet dating and blind dates because it is rife with possible slapstick moments. If you’ve read any Kristan Higgins novel, you know she incorporates at least one bad date in there. Why? Because it can be really funny.
What struck me as completely ironic was when the judgmental Jennie who has been calling the un-Prince Charmings “Ronalds,” is pretty much informed she’s a Ronald and she gets her nose out of joint. But it didn’t occur to her that’s how she was treating the guys she was meeting.
Due to its short length and its first person pov, I never really came to like Jennie. And, I certainly couldn’t imagine taking two weeks of vacation from my job in order to find a man unless this were “Genie Grants My Wish” and I got to spend hours with the men of my dreams in order to decide which one I got to spend the rest of my days with kind of scenario. When you work hard, vacation should be spent in a much more pleasurable pursuit than an hour of weeding out internet dates per day.
Finally, the ending was too predictable. Perhaps I hadn’t guessed the nature of how it was all going to become wonderful, but I did guess the guy.
Ultimately this is a pretty innocuous and average read and not the laughs I was hoping for.
I won an ARC from LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review.
rating: 
3 out of 5 butterflies
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