Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner

Today we are reaching back into the archives for a classic Book Brats Snarky Review! Maybe I should make this a First of the Month tradition, eh? Note, this was written while I was in a MA program AND working on an internship with an hour commute each way dedicated to reports and researching Chinese foreign affairs. Not good times. Now I'm free! Well, kinda - I'm looking for jobs.

Good in Bed? More like implausible relationships, pregnancies, and life as we know it!

376 Pages
Published 2002 by Washington Square Press
Read April 2011

Being bogged down with work and with school, I have gone from reading six books a month to reading six books a year (other than academic journals and books related to the politics of East Asia). Good in Bed somehow managed to pique my interest, so I downloaded the kindle edition and started reading. I have to admit, for the first 2/3 of the book I found myself easily identifying with the main character Cannie, minus the boyfriend issues (I'm single) and family problems. She was likable, enjoy...moreBeing bogged down with work and with school, I have gone from reading six books a month to reading six books a year (other than academic journals and books related to the politics of East Asia). Good in Bed somehow managed to pique my interest, so I downloaded the kindle edition and started reading. I have to admit, for the first 2/3 of the book I found myself easily identifying with the main character Cannie, minus the boyfriend issues (I'm single, ready to mingle, but I don't see any men knocking down my door) and family problems. She was likable, enjoyable, and well written. The last 1/3 of the novel, though, was where things went off the deep end.

The book went from plausible to being one unlikely scenario to another, from meeting and becoming BFFs with the number one Hollywood celeb in a bathroom to her screenplay being sold to her ex's new girlfriend being the cause of her baby's premature birth (maybe). Cannie became unlikable and quite frankly annoying, but by the very end I saw the return of the Cannie from the beginning. But by that point she had the man of her dreams, the baby of her dreams, the life of her dreams, the friends of her dreams, etc etc etc of her dreams. For me, it was like losing the Cannie I cared about on page 50 and replacing her with some Cannie that had been turned into a sterilized Hollywood version of herself that had to be rescued by the handsome love interest who is rich and handsome and kind and smart (so on and so on) instead of saving herself like we had hoped.

This book is good mindnumbing fun when you are riding the train to work every day, suffering through writing a Masters thesis while trying yourself to write a novel. But is it a great novel? Absolutely not. Just a little fun. But yeah, I might be putting the sequel on my TBR pile right now as we speak...


♥♥♥/5

Verdict: Numbs your mind from reality very well, but otherwise is too unrealistic to be fun.