Johanna Edwards, Your Big Break

Your Big Break

Johanna Edwards

Berkley, Mar 2006, $14.00, 320 pp.

ISBN: 0425207846

In Boston, Dani Myers works as a communication specialist at Your Big Break, helping people end unwanted relationships and delivering other disagreeable news for clients. Though Dani is especially great at dumping other people's boyfriends and girlfriends, she has no significant other of her own, so she turns to the imagined romantic woes of her family and customers in an attempt to play matchmaker, and to resuscitate dormant dead relationships as she hates watching stunned in the headlights "insignificant others" dealing with the "five stages of breakup hell".

Her latest interventions have caused her incredible trepidation. The customer Gretchen Monahan wants her to end her romance with the "Big Jackass", a married man, who turns out to be Dani's dad apparently cheating on her mom. Dani tries to uncover the truth, as she plans to intervene with her parents to keep them together. Another client, Erin wants to drop a kind hearted schoolteacher, Brady, whose bank account cannot support her in the style she demands. Dani likes what she hears about the teacher, so uses a note rather than in person to end the relationship; thus allowing her to enter his life, but she hides her occupation especially how she "met" him.

In spite of a too sweet ending, YOUR BIG BREAK is an entertaining chick lit tale starring a caring young woman who seems to be working at the wrong job, as she wants to repair broken hearts not ripping further broken hearts. The storyline is fun to follow, as Dani breaks all the office rules by interfering when she should be in and out, leading to a fine relationship drama, except for its too simplistic overly optimistic ending.

Harriet Klausner