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Review--Beginner's Greek, by James Collins

Peter Russell meets Holly on a plane from New York to LA, and immediately falls in love with her. However, when he arrives at his hotel that night, he finds that he's lost her phone number, written on a scrap of paper torn from a Thomas Mann book. Ten years later, Peter finds that Holly is married to his best friend, Jonathan, and Peter himself married to Charlotte Montague, a pretty yet unremarkable girl. Meanwhile, Peter has risen through the ranks at Beeche, a Wall Street firm.

I'll be blunt, and tell you that I hated this book. It was bland, and the plot seemed to go nowhere. Moreover, the coincidence that Holly just happened to marry Peter's best friend is too much. There are also other coincidences in this book that really require the reader to suspend his or her belief. This book really and truly reads like the script for a Lifetime Original Movie. Peter's boss seems like a cartoon character--I mean what boss in real life would come straight out and say, "I hate you, I'm going to destroy you," to an employee? The friendship between Peter and Jonathan was completely implausable--why is someone like Peter, a nice, ordinary guy, friends with someone so nasty? Also, I thought that Peter himself was kind of a blah character. I think the major problem with him is that he's TOO nice, almost to the point of being boring. I just found myself thinking, "who cares?" I advise you to skip this novel and spend your time and money elsewhere.
Also reviewed by: S. Krishna Books

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