Emily's Reasons Why Not: A Novel [Hardcover]

Carrie Gerlach (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 6, 2004

Though her (biological) clock is furiously ticking away, entertainment publicity pro extraordinaire Emily Sanders didn't hear the starting bell. Hitting thirty and watching her best friends settle down, she too wants to have the life that once upon a time ... wished upon a star ... she dreamed she'd have: the house, the kids, the perfect man. But in L.A., where image is everything, "where every beauty pageant winner is an eight in a sea of nines all wishing they were Julia Roberts," finding true love isn't easy. Especially when boyfriend material includes a beautiful young surfer god, an aging music executive, the boss's boss's boss, and a baseball player with two cell phones (one of which Emily doesn't have the number to).

With her confidence heading due south like everything else on her body, Emily turns to a smart, sharp-eyed psychotherapist who helps her get past the "flutter, flutter," her old time-tested method for picking the wrong guy. Soon she finds herself able to spot "the reasons," the previously invisible flags of a destined-to-fail relationship, and narrow her focus to stop looking for Mr. Right and learn how to start looking out for Mr. Wrong.

Emily's Reasons Why Not is for everyone who has ever wasted her time chasing down the wrong guy for the right reasons, wondering "why" and "when is it going to happen for me?" With the edge of an insider, but the heart of a dreamer, the disarming and unflappable Emily meshes her views on the entertainment industry she works in, the men she's dated, the therapy sessions she mulled over, and "the one" she knows is out there for every woman ... including herself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A 30-year-old publicist tired of "hollow independence" desperately seeks a husband in the cutthroat, image-conscious world of Hollywood stardom's fringe. Gerlach's energetic but familiar debut stars lovelorn Emily Sanders, who's likable enough but lacks the charisma and depth to help her story stand out in a sea of books targeting other "SSWs" ("single, successful women"). Emily begins therapy with Dr. Deperno (she has to love herself before she can find a man to love her), but best girlfriends Reilly and Grace and loving dog Sam provide more support as Dr. D pushes her to write top-10 lists for why her exes have been the wrong men. First-timer Gerlach offers some incisive passages about Hollywood's lower rungs, but she also uses wardrobes and jobs as shorthand for personality, which make her characters read like caricatures. Bad boy number one, for instance, is David Jenkins, the powerful president of Emily's company; he has a Hugo Boss suit, a Mercedes and strong arms, and not surprisingly, he turns out to be a career-driven womanizer. Emily's conservative guidelines for female behavior hearken back to the Rules and include platitudes like "no sex equals calls." Gerlach has a handle on the "hack-n-flack" relationship that fuels celebrity culture, but this book, while offering intermittent guilty pleasures, brings little that's fresh to the single-girl genre.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Energetic...incisive...” (Publishers Weekly )

“[EMILY’S REASONS WHY NOT] is both hilarious and thought-provoking.” (Lexington Herald-Leader )

“...distinguished by snap-crackle wit...one heck of a chuckle ride.” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer )

US Weekly Hot Book Pick (Us Weekly )

“Conversational and witty prose.” (Nashville Tennessean )

“Fascinating...” (Kirkus Reviews )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (July 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060594241
• ISBN-13: 978-0060594244
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,837,305 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Waste of Time, November 7, 2005

By 

Jennifer Manista (Canal Fulton, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Emily's Reasons Why Not: A Novel (Paperback)

This book was horrible. I think the editor was on vacation because there were so many grammatical mistakes and sentences that just didn't make sense. The time line of events was disjointed and I never got the feel of how long these relationships actually were. The book had no flow and you found yourself not connecting with any of the characters. Which is odd because the scenarios Emily went through were so universal that you should have been connecting with her. The other characters might as well never even been in the book they were so pale and underdeveloped. Why even put them it? Filling space I guess. The men Emily dated were such stereotypical men that you didn't feel sorry for Emily-- you felt like yelling at her for being so utterly stupid. And to put so much emphasis on sex (which is all she seemed to think a relationship was about) just made her character even more unlikable. I rarely write reviews, but this book was so terrible that I just had to.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get Out Your Pen, You'll Be Taking Notes!, May 25, 2005

By 

Rian Montgomery "Rian Montgomery" (Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Emily's Reasons Why Not: A Novel (Paperback)

Mr. Wrong. We've all dated him, and some of us are too good at finding him. Emily Sanders, our main heroine of this novel, seems to have an extraordinarily good nose at picking out the wrong man. So she decides to go to therapy to see what she is doing wrong. Her therapist tells her to make a list of 10 reasons why she thinks it didn't work out for her past relationships. So she does.

The novel goes back and forth in time, and tells the story of each of Emily's relationships, while Emily lists the reasons why she thinks it didn't work out. Each of the stories are really good. When she gets to her most recent relationship, which she is still in at the time of therapy, she begins listing why she knows deep down that the relationship won't work out either.

This was a great book. I personally feel as though I've learned some things about dating Mr. Wrong, which was an added benefit of reading this novel. Through all her bad choices with men, Emily doesn't seem to me to be a pushover or idiot; instead she seems intelligent and funny, but just needs some guidance in her love life. Another great thing about this novel was that although it went back and forth from past to present, it didn't once get confusing.

The only thing about this book that I didn't like as much was that the writing seemed awkward and did not flow smoothly. I ran across a couple of grammatically incorrect sentences that made me raise an eyebrow.

However, overall this was a great book that I really enjoyed. Best of all, I feel I came away with some good pointers about how to spot Mr. Wrong. This book definitely isn't for everyone - if you don't like stories about a woman sitting in therapy and rehashing the past mistakes she's made with men, then you most likely won't like this book. But if you are in the mood for something a bit unusual and interesting, give this one a try.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very Disappointing, October 13, 2007

By 

E. Spiridakos (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Emily's Reasons Why Not: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is basically about a 30-something Botoxed woman who can't stop telling us what kind of car she is driving. It must be very difficult for an author to make her heroine so unappealing, we wonder why anyone would be attracted to her in the first place, but somehow, the author manages. Her friends are underdeveloped characters and I dont think I need to be told the same "reasons why not" three times (one list for every guy is okay, but we get THE SAME lists during each chapter, at the end of each chapter, and then again at the end of the book). The only highlight of the book is her connection with Sam, her dog, and even that relationship did not feel "real" to me when Sam was sick. Don't bother with this one.