Book Review and Giveaway: The Breakup Doctor

By Jami Deise

**Giveaway is now closed**

I got married really young – met my husband at 21 – so thankfully it’s been a while since I’ve been dumped. But as a writer looking for an agent and publisher, I still get rejected on a regular basis. It’s painful. And maybe I shouldn’t be following agents on Twitter who’ve told me “thanks, but no thanks,” because that makes it all the more painful to read their tweets about the talented new writer they just signed (not me) and the three-book deal they just got for a client (also not me). I want to cry in my pillow like Sally Albright in When Harry Met Sally…“It’s not that she didn’t want to sign any new writers. It’s just that she didn’t want to sign me!”

I could probably use some help.

Sally Albright could probably have used some help, too. She let Joe string her along for five years, suppressed the pain of the break-up, and then nearly destroyed her relationship with true love Harry Burns by guilting him into spending the night when she already knew how much he hated that. If only she had had someone mature and unbiased to talk to (not Marie). Someone like therapist Brook Ogden.

Brook Ogden, the title character in Phoebe Fox’s debut novel The Breakup Doctor, is a mature unbiased someone. She’s the first person her best friend Sasha runs to in the wake of yet another disastrous relationship. She’s so together that when she goes to work and finds a wrecking ball (not a singing barely dressed one) demolishing the office building where she practiced – as well as her therapy partnership – she quickly reinvents herself as the Breakup Doctor. With her hometown of Fort Myers, Florida, filled with desperate dumpees like Sasha, soon she has a number of clients as well as a regular column in the local newspaper. Brook provides sage, mature advice as she talks women out of Facebook and in-person stalking, snooping, incessant calling, and drive-bys. And then Brook gets dumped, and her mature, professional persona goes out the window.

The Breakup Doctor is a very funny, very well-written book that will appeal to any reader who’s ever been rejected. (It may actually be dangerous for the recently dumped, as it describes all kinds of destructive behaviors that perhaps an angry, hurt reader hadn’t come up with on her own.) Brook is not the typical chick lit heroine at the beginning of the book. Already coupled, she’s not searching for love – in fact, when her boyfriend Kendall proposed moving in, she didn’t immediately say yes. She has a career she’s very good at, a house that needs rehabbing, and a family in a bit of a crisis. She’s the rock steady, thoughtful person who gives the best advice.

So, truthfully, I was a bit disappointed when she became just another crazy dumped chick. This is not a knock on the book by any means – the sequences entailing Brook’s unraveling were hysterical and cringe-worthy at the same time. And as a writer, I understand that conflict is the underpinning of all stories and there is so much of that in the paradoxical character – i.e., the obese doctor, the debt-ridden financial planner, the single relationship therapist. But it was just so refreshing to read humorous women’s fiction with a stable, mature protagonist, that I was sad to see her going through her boyfriend’s email. But it was funny as hell.

There’s also a significant subplot about Brook’s parents’ split, and Brook’s never-ending, unsuccessful quest to win her mother’s approval. Fox seems to imply that a parent who cannot be pleased leads to an adult who can’t handle rejection, but the connection seemed tenuous to me.

The book did leave some major questions unanswered – just like breakups do – so I was glad to read on the book flap that The Breakup Doctor is the first in a series, and the second book should be out next year. I don’t know if Fox is taking suggestions for subsequent books, but perhaps Brook can start a sub-specialty in dealing with rejected writers who obsess over agents’ Twitter feeds. I can’t be the only one… can I?

Thanks to Phoebe Fox for the book in exchange for an honest review. She has a print version, along with a very cute tote-bag, for one lucky US/Canada reader!

How to win:
Please tell us the craziest thing you've ever done post break-up.

One entry per person.

Please include your e-mail address or another way to reach you if you win. Entries without contact information will NOT be counted (and we do not count Google + as contact information).

US/Canada only. Giveaway ends June 11th at midnight EST.