Get a New Plan Stan

Getting Rid of Matthew

Jane Fallon

Harper Collins

As unfair as it might seem, I had big hopes for this novel. The premise is definitely intriguing. An under-achieving, but very beautiful secretary/PA decides to end the four and a half year affair she has been having with a much older, married co-worker. In the process of leaving her lover, she somehow manages to befriend his wife, alienate his pre-teen daughters, and fall madly in lust with his son. Sounds like it could be a lot of fun, right? Sigh. If only it had lived up to its potential ...

I honestly can't think of anything good to say about this novel. I didn't hate GRoM (it wasn't written well enough to evoke that kind of passion in me,) but I definitely wouldn't recommend it to any of my friends. I found the main character to be vapid and shallow and flat-- much like Kitty Fane at the beginning of The Painted Veil. It could be that the novel is just a victim of bad timing --admittedly, my mental landscape is still occupied with thoughts of Adam Spark and I still don't seem to have room for much else. Or it could be that I had such high expectations (I was hoping that GRoM might be the harbinger of an anti-chick lit genre) that the book just couldn't measure up. I'm not sure. In any event, I have to give this one two thumbs down.