Jon Rance

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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...at the back of my mind, I have always held out hope - blind, foolish, irrational hope - that they will break up. When you find yourself desperately in love with your best mate’s girlfriend, blind, foolish, irrational hope is all you have. In fact, and not to put too fine a point on it, I have been banking on it.

WHAT'S THE WORST MAN ABOUT?
The novel starts off with Dan and Lucy's wedding going awry--the details are a little fuzzy, but we know it has something to do with our narrator, Ollie. Then we go back to twelve weeks earlier when Dan and Lucy tell Dan's lifelong friend, Ollie, that they're engaged and we see how in love/deeply infatuated/possibly obsessed Ollie is with Lucy.

For most of the book, it's difficult to say exactly how Ollie feels--he tells you one thing, but his actions/thoughts may make readers reach other conclusions. So, I'm going to put the phrase in quotation marks (imagine me making wildly exaggerated air quotes as I type).

He's been this way for three years--since he met her--and it's only gotten worse from what we can tell. One friend knows about his hangup (and Lucy likely does, too, because she's no fool).

The main plotline of this book is seeing Ollie try to shake it off, to try to force himself out "of love" with her--or it's seeing him fantasizing about ways he can profess his "love" to her and scheming ways to get Lucy to break off the engagement.

UNSYMPATHETIC PROTAGONIST

I really want Dan and Lucy to be happy, just not together.

Ohhhh boy. It was really hard to find a way to like Ollie. This was something I struggled with from the opening paragraphs right up to the last sentence--and, frankly, never succeeded at. This is a guy we're supposed to find at least somewhat likable and appealing--we're supposed to root for him.

But he's an immature little twit pining after his best friend's girlfriend and only stopped when she became his best friend's fiancée--not because he grew up, but because he started pining after his best friend's fiancée. We're not talking best friends since college or something--we're talking about a couple of guys who grew up together, and might as well have been brothers since childhood. And he's so wrapped up in what he wants that he can't be happy for Dan. He tries to be (or so he claims in the narration if you can trust him), but it fails.

He even gets this harebrained idea to make Lucy jealous--and that this jealousy will cause her to realize her mistake, break off the engagement, etc. The girl he uses in this scenario is a far better fit for him--if only because she's single and looking (although there are many other reasons)--and Ollie won't see it (or does, and still blows it off for Lucy).

As Sherman T. Potter would put it, this boy's full of mule fritters.

The irony of it all is that Ollie teaches young teens/preteens--and ends up acting like one.

THE SAVING GRACES
Here's what kept me going. In the middle of all of this are three stories worth reading.

Ollie's flatmate--another friend of Dan and Lucy's--has a quirky little love story (and dog story) all his own. I don't know if there's a real Rom-Com in it, or if it's just a good storyline from a Romance, because we only get glimpses of it as Wilf tries to talk some sense into Ollie. Regardless, watching that storyline was one of the pleasures of this book.

Ollie's Dad has been alone for a very long time and he just may have found someone, too. This storyline brings a lot of the comedy of the book--and a decent amount of the heart. I'd have read an entire book on this story.

Ollie's dad has been single for years because Ollie's mother left them when he was pretty young. It's one of those things that shaped the two of them--and you could probably make some sort of link between this and Ollie's actions in the present. But whatever--the thing to focus on is that Ollie's introspection about her absence in his life and the rest of this story are some of the most honest and moving emotional writing in the book.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT THE WORST MAN?

‘Then stop acting like a f($^@#g child and grow up,’ says Wilf before his phone rings.

That's all the book needed, Ollie to listen to Wilf.

I was prepared to be very tepidly positive in this post because of its strengths, but Rance lost me in the last 9%. I'd have been tempted to discard the book over those events if I wasn't in the closing chapters. I want to stress that's with the exception of those arcs I mentioned in the previous section. But those three couldn't save it.

The writing was clever enough--with some really nice lines and moments scattered throughout. For example, Ollie's description of "possibly one of the worst dates in the world," is both a. entertaining for the reader and b. a really bad date. You can't help but have strong reactions to these characters (mostly positive)--there's a student of Ollie's that you will feel for in particular.

In the end, Rance did the best he could with this character and the premise--really he portrayed Ollie and the situation pretty well. Which was the problem for me, in the end. I'm definitely not writing off Rance for this, and will be happy to try something else from him (I'll just do a better job reading the descriptions first).

Save yourself the time and check out something else by Rance, like The Summer Holidays Survival Guide .… (plus d'informations)

So though the synopsis of this book looked great. I was bored from beginning to end. The shifting timelines and points of view were too much to deal with and so I really didn't get into the book until almost the very end.

Sunday Dinners focuses on the Wilde family. Every Sunday the family has a roast dinner (cooked by Greg) who wants the once a week sit down in order for the family to check in with each other. Told over a series of months and then years readers are given glimpses of the Wilde family which consists of husband Greg, wife Lizzy, and their three children, Lucy, Matt, and Holly.

I don't think that I particularly cared for any member of this family. Most of the interactions between Greg and Lizzy was one or both of them exuding hostility or bafflement at the other one's hostility.

The older daughter Lucy was in the midst of an affair that was throwing her for a loop.

Matt was all over the place not knowing what to do after getting his heart broken.

And Holly was coming to terms with her sexuality in the most hare-brained pain in the butt way ever.

Greg and Lizzy's issues were pretty much swept away with after an 11th hour contrivance and that apparently made things great again. After having to read about how much fighting and arguing that was going on, I am still surprised that these two didn't end up murdering each other before the end of the book.

Honestly, there was way too many cooks in the kitchen for me to be able to get settled down in the story enough. Once the story started to jump ahead by months I pretty much gave up.

The writing was serviceable, but I really wish that I had been able to get a sense of the Wilde family's "voices". Lizzy and Greg had very distinct voices, but honestly all of the kids started to sound like one long whine through the whole book and I was wishing that the story would wrap up so I could be done. I can honestly say that I was bored. You would think with these shifting plot lines I wouldn't be, but nope I was.

With the time jumps the flow of the story was all over the place too. And at one point I had to go back several chapters because I totally missed something that was being talked about in the book.

The setting of the book is really the house and the location of the Sunday dinners. I wish I had gotten a better sense of the house and how it was set up. It sounded small though when you get to the end and it mentions how big it was, I was a bit surprised.

The ending tied things up nicely. I just really wish that I had managed to engage with any of these characters so I could get a sense of satisfaction when the book was completed.… (plus d'informations)

There's something so very special about Dan and Nat Got Married; it has all of the perfect ingredients to make a laugh out loud, pull at your heartstrings, not too mushy kind of love story. I loved it from the very first chapter and I had so many laugh out loud moments that I had several visits from my old evil friend, the hiccups.

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I started this as it is the first book I have read by Jon Rance, but I quickly settled into the book as if I was meeting up with an old friend. The writing style is so humorous, yet so true to life that you can imagine this happening in real life. It seems so far fetched for strangers to end up married after meeting on drunken trips to Vegas but I bet it has happened on many occasions. Once they get over the initial shock and horror, it becomes apparent that perhaps Dan and Nat were meant to meet, fall in love and get married after all - they just missed out the falling in love bit and went straight on to marriage!

I loved seeing the relationship between Dan and Nat grow, with the encouragement of their friends who were witnesses at the wedding in Vegas. Friends who might have also taken the plunge had they stayed in Vegas a bit longer. There seemed to be a laugh in every chapter but with every up there is always a down; enter the exes to trample over the young shoots of feelings that Dan and Nat were cultivating. I was mentally shouting 'noooooo Nat' when her ex, Charlie, came back on the scene.

Chapters alternated between Dan and Nat and although it is a tried and tested method, in this instance I think it was brilliantly done. Jon Rance has written from both the male and female perspectives and captured both of their individual characters perfectly. It has left me eager to read Jon Rance's back catalogue and I actually wonder how I have not read any of his books before.

Dan and Nat Got Married gets a definite 5 out of 5 from me - I'd give it more if I could. Put your exercise DVDs away and read Dan and Nat Got Married instead - it'll give you a better tummy muscle workout with all the belly laughs you are sure to have.

Many thanks to Jon Rance for putting a smile on my face by sending me this e-book in exchange for an honest review.… (plus d'informations)