ARC Review – Not the Girl You Marry by Andie J. Christopher

Happy Monday everyone! I’m so excited to bring you the review of this book! As excited as I was to read it, truly. Yay yay, it’s Romance Monday!

In Not the Girl You Marry, Jack Nolan and Hannah Mayfield meet at a hipster bar in Chicago when Jack’s two friends make gross comments about Hannah’s bestie, and Hannah turns around to set the record straight. Jack ends up purchasing tacos for the two of them, and Hannah insists that she isn’t going to date him. Ever. Not a chance. She’s been burned by too many men in the past. And Jack is fine with that… sort of. He’s also been left by a lot of women, and he doesn’t feel the need to add to that list.

But then, things happen at both of their jobs that threaten their career progressions. Hannah is told that she’ll never move up at the event planning agency she works for because she’s incapable of feeling love, so she can’t plan weddings. And Jack’s how-to series at a small online news agency is a hit, even though he’d rather be a hard-hitting reporter.

Hannah tells her boss that she has a boyfriend, thank you very much, and she’ll prove that she can plan weddings my assisting her bestie with the wedding of the year – a sitting senator’s daughter’s wedding. And Jack’s boss says he’ll consider moving Jack to the political beat if Jack ends his how-to career with a bang – how to lose a girl. Both Hannah and Jack start using each other to further their careers.

Falling for each other wasn’t exactly in the plan…

IT’S A HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN TEN DAYS REBOOT, Y’ALL.

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3 Things I Loved

1. Jack. Jack is the man of my dreams. He’s definitely worthy of being the millennial McConaughey. He’s sweet and he finds feminist views to be just normal and part of his everyday life and he hates what he’s been doing for Hannah but wants more from his life. I also loved that Christopher gender swapped the characters from the original. It was a nice touch, and Jack wanting the political beat was so realistic in this day and age.
2. Hannah. I found Hannah to be intensely relatable. She likes her job, even though she knows she’s capable of more if she wants it. She likes being single, even though it had always been her dream to settle down with someone who understood her. And she’s been told by past boyfriends that she’s too into sex, and it was part of what ended relationships for her! I loved that angle, because you don’t see it very often in romance, but it’s so real and relatable to millennial dating! I also, personally, related to Hannah being told she’s too crass and bitchy to be “a girl someone marries.” That hit me in the fucking soul, man.
3. Sasha. Hannah’s best friend is the absolute best. She’s Hannah’s opposite in most regards, but it’s so clear that they’ve known each other forever and are true soulmates. And they back each other up all the time. MORE FEMALE FRIENDSHIPS LIKE THIS IN BOOKS PLEASE!

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Dislikes/Problematic Content

I didn’t come across anything problematic in this book – I found it to be diverse, fun, and just a joy to read.

As for dislikes, the only thing I can come up with is how much I disliked how small Hannah was made to feel by men. She believed, truly, that she was a girl who no one would ever marry. And that flipping sucks, because I think a lot of women have been there! So this is not a quibble with the plot, just with the relatability that ended up hitting me right where it hurts. There’s (at least one) someone out there for everyone. If you so choose, everyone is someone that someone would want to marry. It hurts my heart when people think otherwise.

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Rating

A reminder of the rating scale:

• Red = DNF, I hated everything
• Orange = Ugh, no thank you
• Yellow = I mean, I’ve read worse, but there were problems
• Green = This was good! 
• Blue = Oh my gosh, I loved this book!
• Purple = This is the unicorn of books and I will be rereading it until the binding falls apart and EVERYONE should be reading it!

If you like romance, and ESPECIALLY if you love the movie How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, like I do, you’ll love this book. I’m giving Not the Girl You Marry a BLUE rating! I loved it!

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Thank you to the publisher and to Edelweiss for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Happy reading!