Good Girls Gone Bad - Jillian Medoff

Janey Fabre's an actuary - numbers, statistics and probablility are her life. Well, they would be if she had a life, but men seem to see straight through her, rather than seeing her, and at thirty-something she's unhappily single. Still haunted by the absence of her mother, a rare success story from a pulp mill town, and scarred by the humiliation of discovering her only real boyfriend - a preppy of beauty - was only banging her on the side and was really enagaged to an equally preppy deb, it's not surprising Janey considers suicide strategies as a way to unwind.
When she joins a therapy group, populated by some truly weird women, Janey has no idea she's about to meet friends that will be with her for the rest of her life, or that she's about to discover how to move on from her past and embrace her future.
Billed as "fiercely intelligent" and "laugh-out-loud funny," I found Gone Bad neither, perhaps because I found Janey annoyingly spineless. Every half potential man she meets is instantly transformed as Janey foresees their life together, from first date through first baby and on to retirement, a fantasy that interferes with her real life. She compulsively lies, even to the reader, a trait which helps delay revelations that would certainly colour the plot, but which I found jarring. And she's just... wet. There was also a high level of had-I-but-known, an element that must be used sparringly if it's to be used at all.
This isn't to say that it was alll bad. I liked the use of actuarial information as both a way for Janey to distance herself from unpleasantness in the messy real world, and as an insight into her character. The reflections of being a motherless daughter had an additional poignancy for me because my mother's mother died when she (my mother, obviously) was five, which has coloured our relationship. And for all that I continued reading Good Girls Gone Bad more to get it finished than out of enjoyment, I was nonetheless a little moist-eyed at the end, which was annoying. Medoff's first book was apparently a publishing fairytale of critical acclaim. Despite these redeeming feathures, I think I'll pass. - Alex