Review: Good Premise, Good Writing, Terribly Unlikeable Characters
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 12 26, 2012
The premise to this story had me eager to download and read it, but unfortunately, while the author has a definite ability to write well, I just couldn't care for her characters. At first, Bridget, a nanny to Paul's 4 year-old son, struck me as intelligent, caring, and strong. She loved the little boy under her care and clearly was going to make sure that he was well cared for. But then her eating neurosis takes over her character and I just started to be disgusted by her. You see, she is  size 16, and she is afraid to eat in front of other people for fear of what they'll think of her. So she deals with this by not eating in front of people and then bingeing on total junk when she's alone. Worse, she is constantly crying about it.Paul, on the other hand, is a chef. Not just any chef, mind you, but a celebrity chef with an apparently requisite, and definitely cliched, terrible temper. I had difficulty liking him from the beginning. In his dealings with other people, and in talking about his employees, he is extremely condescending and critical and just an outright jerk. But I guess this is okay when you're a self-loathing nanny whose entire life revolves around a four year-old. Temper tantrums have to be par for the course for her.At about the 37% point in this book, I was starting to get really fed up with Bridget's self-destructive behavior. She is so utterly unrealistic and an oversimplified representation of how real women who struggle with their size think of themselves. That Paul accepts her as she is is sort of good but also sort of just weird--who could really want someone who cries so much?! I kept thinking that the two of them would have to change each other in some way. The potential was certainly there. I don't know how it could have happened, all I can say is that it didn't.There is a big "misunderstanding" in the book that really isn't a misunderstanding at all (he's a jerk, he doesn't even know he's a jerk and blames her for it, and she pretty much accepts him back without any real change on his part). And just when I started thinking, at least the kid is cute, even he whined once too much for me. I really hate to say this because I think it was technically well-written, but I just didn't care for this book.