How to Lose a Bachelor by Anna Banks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An OK read but nothing special.

This is my first book from this author and I chose it as I thought the story sounded like it would be quite funny. It’s not the most original of ideas, a girl enters a reality dating show to win money and ends up running into an ex, but it could have been exciting and enjoyable. While I didn’t dislike it, I get the feeling it’s one of those books that I will have forgotten in a week or so.

The story follows Rochelle Ransom who enters dating show Luring Love not because she want to find love but because the prize money would help her support her favourite charity. However it turns out the bachelor whose heart she will be competing against 9 other girls to win is the guy who broke her heart in college. If she quits she loses the money so she decides to stay and resorts to increasingly ridiculous behaviour to try to get voted off. However Grant Drake, her ex, is determined to keep her around for as long as possible. Is he trying to get revenge or does he want her back?

I think for me the issue with the story is that it was missing the emotion and the spark. It’s an easy enough read (I think I read it in about 3 hours)and the narrative flows quite well but I think it was maybe a bit shallow. There was no depth, no description and therefore no real connection with the characters.

There should have been some laughs in the story as Rochelle resorts to increasingly extreme behaviour to get voted off. However her actions didn’t really come across as funny to me. She just comes across as a little bit ridiculous and I’m not convinced that a professional lawyer would be willing to act that way on national television to get money even if it is for charity. To be perfectly honest I just didn’t find her believable as a lawyer at all. I think it would have made more sense for her to have a different occupation.

As for Grant Drake, the bachelor everyone wants to win, I’m not sure I could see the attraction. He seemed nice enough but a little bit bland and boring. I also felt like he tended to over react a bit to certain things. Considering the anti domestic violence message running through the book I thought it odd that it was considered ok for him to break someone else’s nose for a throwaway comment that people use all of the time.

Some of the other girls competing seemed like they could be quite interesting characters but we didn’t really get to see much of them. Again what we did get was pretty superficial and there was no depth.

The story and the ending were fairly predictable as you would expect from this type of story but overall I thought it was a nice easy read. It’s not a book I’ll be rushing to read again but if you’re looking for something light it might be worth a try.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review