30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 3
Book 12/30
As always with Jennifer Wright, I laughed the whole book. She also has really good luck with audiobook narrators. Hillary Huber does a great job with her sly (and sometimes not so sly) humor.
This book does exactly what it says on the tin. There are thirteen essays (and a small introduction) detailing in Wright’s signature style thirteen of the worst breakups throughout recorded history, starting with Nero in Rome all the way up to Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, and Eddie Fisher. Her style is very informal, and if you don’t like it, you won’t like the book, no matter how interesting the history is. It’s just a very distinct style, but one that I happen to love.
Like with her last book, the one about murderous women throughout history, I consumed this incredibly, incredibly fast, so fast that I really wasn’t able to retain much, and because there wasn’t really an ‘oomph’ kind of theme with it, it just ended up being a good time. That lack of oomph is why I’m holding off the fifth star, because I know she can deliver the oomph when she wants to. She did it in her book about pandemics, and I’m really hoping she’ll do it again in Mrs. Restell, which was published in March, like with the pandemic book, has a lot of relevance to our current day situation.
[4.5 stars]
