Customer Reviews

Help Wanted, Desperately

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Have you ever been on a bad job interview? Well if so, you are in good company - we all have! Including Alexa, the charming, slightly naïve but always entertaining heroine of "Help Wanted, Desperately" by Ariel Horn. Alexa is in her last year of college and doesn't know what she is going to do next, but she knows she needs to find a job in the big city. The only other option is a teaching job overseas in Majuro, which is thousands of miles away from her boyfriend Jared.

Thus begins her mostly unsuccessful and insane string of interviews. She goes through a job interview where she is told she should get plastic surgery; a test run as a model scout; an hour long personality placement test, and much, much more. There are a few job offers, such as being a phone sex operator or writing headlines about yeast infections. But is that what she wants? (Gee, I wonder...) With the prospects getting more insane and sparse by the day, will Alexa ever find a job in the city or will she be shipped overseas to do the teaching gig? Find out in by picking yourself up a copy of this book!

I enjoyed reading about Alexa's adventures in this book. The It is well written, funny, intriguing and not without a few puns. (One particularly bad one, I have to say!) Ariel Horn definitely knows how to keep the reader laughing though. Many readers will also be able to identify with Alexa's misadventures in the job industry, as well as sigh with relief that they haven't gone through such things.

Overall I recommend this book to anyone who has ever tried to find a job. Cute, fun, hilarious at times and entertaining - it's sure to delight most chick lit fans!

Help Wanted Desperately is just what I needed after a mad, crazy week at work filled with deadlines and long hours.

Alexa Hoffman is counting the days until she graduates college with her English major and is off to volunteer teach on the island of Majuro. She has always dreamed of living/working in the Big Apple and is desperate to find any job to avoid having to leave the country to teach. It doesn't help that her boyfriend of two years, Jared, is also finishing school and has a job hooked up with Christie's after graduation.

Alexa knows that she wants her job to be challenging and worthwhile while supporting a NYC lifestyle, but has NO idea what she wants to do. Let the job hunt and resume sending begin. She interviews for jobs at a retail magazine, buyer for a department store, model scout, a poet, earthworm breeder, consultant, auditions for Rent and public relations. There's many more, but you get the idea.

Help Wanted Desperatley is a hillarious tale of one woman trying to find her place in this world - whatever that may be. Each chapter is broken down to the months/days/hours and minutes until she leaves to volunteer in Majuro and the craziness that Alexa struggles with every day in trying to "find herself".

This book was SO funny!! Alexa is at times ridiculous and absurd-which is what makes her such a realistic and believable character (which almost NEVER happens in chick lit!). Sometimes (more often than not, actually) she does the wrong thing. But you know what? So do I. Everybody does, basically. And I loved that she was unafraid to be who she was: flawed, imperfect, funny, paranoid, silly, neurotic. Great read-- funny and entertaining throughout.

We've all been there...the nightmare job interview, where your crushed self-worth is overshadowed only by the interviewer's body odor. What better revenge than to laugh about it?

Ariel Horn captures the absurdity of looking for your first job-- and she'll make your worst interview screwup look like a cakewalk. Alexa's attempts to become everything from a financial consultant to a deodorant sniffer range from funny to hysterical (you WILL laugh out loud again and again!), but in the end there's a surprising point to it all-- and an inspiring one too.

This book would make an awesome gift for any college senior, or for anyone else who's going through the job search and needs to laugh about it.

I normally like chick lit, but this book was disappointing. The situations rang false (even though they were based on the author's actual experiences), and the characters just didn't seem real. The constant mention of Majuro got annoying.

I stayed with it only to see what happened, and the ending was satisfying. But this was not one of those books where I was sad to leave the characters when I closed the cover.

I picked up this book just having seen it on the shelf, and am very glad I did. For anyone who has ever had a long and ridiculous search for employment - or, alternatively, anyone who wants to laugh at someone who did - I can't recommend this book enough.

Alexa's misadventures in her desperate search for employment can be funny, ridiculous, sad or pathetic, but they are never boring. She interviews for everything from model scout to phone sex operator to glorified magazine intern, but you can find that out by reading the back of the book. What you can't discern until reading it is that this is not only a hilarious book, but a poignant one. Alexa is neurotic and bizarre, thoughtful and capable = in other words, she is REAL, not like the cardboard cutout characters you find in other chick lit books who seem to have been put together from some Sex in the City assembly line at a marketing firm. This is the real thing = chick lit, literature about women characters who are witty, anxious, funny, loving and smart. Just like real women.

"Help Wanted, Desperately" passed the "laugh out loud" test and then some (I have embarrassed myself in public all over NY). It is a real pleasure to read "chick lit" that is intelligently written and genuinely funny. I can't believe the author's only 23, and hope that means lots more books are in store from her.

The countdown to employment has begun for New Jersey's Alexa Hoffman. The twenty-one year old knows she has seven months, three weeks, two days and a few nanoseconds to find a job that will enable her to enjoy Manhattan with her boyfriend Jared. If she fails to make it in Manhattan by the time her self imposed clock runs out, her next choice is teaching on some remote Pacific island Majuro.

Alexa is ready to shake the world or at least the Big Apple. Would you believe a run down roach infested apartment requires an advanced degree in higher math to calculate rent. She applies for an assortment of positions that run the gamut from deodorant sniffing to participating in a sleep test. Alexa feels depressed as she believes she must make it in Manhattan. As her frustrations and worries mount with one failure after another, Jared becomes irritated with his beloved and they squabble. Her desperation starts driving them apart as Alexa considers becoming a Majuro.

At times readers will commiserate with Jared as Alexa's shtick wears on the audience and her boyfriend. However, her antics in Manhattan as she jumps from one employment scenario to another turns amusing and raises the deep social issue of a lack of opportunities for recent graduates. Alexa's desperation to obtain gainful employment as she tries to take Manhattan by storm will leave fans laughing especially at her interviews and her fuddling thorough various work. Readers will enjoy this help wanted "lessons learned" (at the end of each chapter) chick lit tale.

Harriet Klausner

just what i needed during my own job search...just moved to LA and am trying to find a job here, and this book had me cracking up the whole way! LOVED it!! recommmend it 100%

What a great book! It was funny and sweet. It made me envious of Alexa who was so young, with her whole life ahead of her, and was completely adored by her boyfriend. Ah... to be young again! I am happy to recommend this book!

Alexa Hoffman is in her senior year at Penn and hasn't a clue what she's going to do. Obviously she needs a job, especially since she ignores her mother's suggestion she consider law school. Still, an English degree is not exactly the road to wealth and employment. And Alexa doesn't really care what job she gets, but it has to be in New York, so she can be near boyfriend Jared.

Alexa's job hunt takes her through a fashion magazine (where her non-straight nipples cost her the job), to cheap department-store buyer, to under-arm sniffer, to public relations. A nasty combination of lying and telling the truth (both at the wrong time) leaves Alexa the last person she knows still jobless--even as Jered lands his dream job. One problem is, Alexa doesn't really have a dream job.

Author Ariel Horn recently graduated from Penn and her writing feels authentic, filled with twenty-something angst. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments as Alexa pinballs from one dumb activity to the next.

HELP WANTED, DESPERATELY is well written and has plenty of funny moments--surely that's reason enough to read a book. I would have liked to see a bit more growth in Alexa, though, and thought that the final resolution was a bit, well, unresolved. Despite her quirks, Alexa came across as spoiled, insensitive, and amoral. Not a bad place to start, but again, I would have prefered to see her grow beyond that.