This Is How It Happened (not a love story)

For any woman who has ever had her heart crushed, spirit dampened, and felt like an overall hag after being dumped will love this book. Our heroine, Maddy, gets dumped via e-mail, loses her prized job in a company she created, and vows to get even. It starts with furniture polish in brownies which leads into hiring a hitman who turns out to be a complete surprise to Maddy and the reader. The ending is such a surprise too that it'll have you giggling. I sat down and read this book in a day. Talk about a real page turner. I stayed up late last night just to finish it and I went to bed with a smile on my face. The only thing about this book that bothers me is the main character's body size. She's Italian and loves to cram food in her mouth. The book describes her as curvy, but she's a size 6? Get real! Other than that, this is a great book. If you like this one, you'll also enjoy The Next Big Thing by Johanna Edwards.

This is a wonderful bit of chick-lit that surpassed all my expectations. I thought it would be funny - there were parts that were absolutely hilarious. I thought it would be clever, and there were parts that were just ingenious, especially in the chick-lit world. Hell truly hath no fury as a woman scorned, and this book details one woman's attempt to "get even" with her ex boyfriend/fiance for basically ruining her life. It was written in an interesting style, chapters alternating between the present where Maddie is trying to deal with her broken heart, and then going back to her time with Connor, the Heartbreaker. In all honesty, towards the end where time was blending (the novel starts 4 months after the Big Breakup) I was having a hard time telling when something happened - was it now, when she was planning revenge, or was it right at the end of the relationship? The book had an interesting twist towards the end, and I was riveted for the last 75 pages (I stayed up late to finish it). The only thing that bugged me about Maddie, the main character, is that she keeps talking about how she's Italian and loves to eat, and she's curvy and she's big and not skinny and yada yada yada, but she's a friggin size 6!!! Last time I checked, most Italian women who love to eat and are in their 30's, and consider themselves big, are NOT a size 6. Good grief. Anyway, I could overlook that, and it was definitely a worthwhile read.

Jo Barrett has created a funny, ruthless, completely sympathetic character in Maddy Piatro, who's considering a life of crime in order to get revenge on her ex. Each character in the book was fantastic, from Heather the pregnant friend, the born-again brother to Dickie the hit man. Fun, fast-paced, smart and original.

Don't get mad. Get even. This is what Madeleine Piatro sets up to do after her charming boyfriend uses her business plan to set up a company, and then kicks her out of the firm and dumps her for another woman. Although Piatro first contemplates actually killing Carlton (with poisoned brownies) she decides that emotional pain is worse, and more lasting, than physical one, and she sets up on extracting revenge, aided by a hit man with a good heart (by far the best character in the book) and her best friend, who's in the middle of her conversion to Judaism, with some less-than-stellar but hilarious results. "This is How it Happened (Not a Love Story)" is a fantastic novel: funny, well-written, and with some surprising insights. A perfect book for the Valentine's season, whether you're in the mood for love -- or blood.

Any book that starts out with the lines "I never intended to KILL him kill him. I mean, actually kill him. It started as a joke." deserves some serious consideration for continued reading (and probable fun). This Is How It Happened (not a love story) by Jo Barrett is an entertaining story about one woman's efforts to get back at a guy who conned her for everything she had. Barrett weaves an amusing tale that keeps the pages turning and the laughs coming. Madeline Piatro is a marketing whiz who's been working for the same boss for the last 14 years. She likes what she does, but her personal life leaves much to be desired. So at a mixer, she ends up finding and falling for a smooth guy who becomes the center of her life. He comes from a rich family, but his hard-nosed dad wants him to work his way up through the company to learn the ropes. Piatro falls hard for Carlton Conners, and pretty soon she's the main means of support in their living-together arrangement. He professes his deep love for her, even going so far as to buy her a ring. But he doesn't want her to wear it around his family, as he's "not ready" for them to know yet. That should have been the first warning sign... Madeline comes up with a killer idea for a new company marketing organic foods for kids. Her and Conners present the concept to his father and some investors, and they agree to fund it. But before the meeting ends, she ends up without any ownership of the company, with only a "promise" of future stock. Well, *that* doesn't work out too well. The company takes off, Conners ends up as the "genius", and dumps Piatro for another woman. Left with little money, no job, and no options, she decides that hiring a hitman to mess up Carlton would be a great idea. But when you don't run in those types of circles, it's a little hard to figure out where to start. And her "do-it-yourself" ideas, such as poisoned brownies, aren't exactly textbook examples of how to rid yourself of someone... Barrett does an excellent job with the characters and the pacing in this novel. It's told in the first person from Piatro's view, so it's easy to sense the frustration and confusion that she's feeling. The story alternates chapter by chapter between her current efforts to extract revenge and her relationship with Conners from the very start. So as you're laughing at her misguided efforts to rid humanity of Carlton, you learn little-by-little what led her to this point. The end has an interesting twist that takes a couple of sharp turns before everything clears up. All in all, it's a fun way to kill a few hours on a plane or a lazy afternoon. When this is released in February, it should do really well...