The Breakup Artist by Shannen Crane Camp

Synopsis: Breaking up with someone is a major pain—-unless you can hire someone else to do it for you! And Amelia demands top dollar for her professional break-up services. Everything's business as usual until David, one of the boys she's been hired to dump, throws her for a loop. Now she must decide if David's intentions are genuine, or if there's something sinister behind his flirting.

Review: This is probably more like a four star read, if you don’t overanalyze it like I did.

Overall, it’s a cute story. I liked our heroine Amelia. To earn a little extra college money she helps girls breakup with their boyfriends. Because of her “profession” she doesn’t have any friends, mainly because she changes personality depending on who she is breaking up with. She goes through multiple hair colors, clothes and names to get the job done and keep her identity a secret. Then one day she stumbles upon a guy who just may be onto her little secret. Which brings us to David, who seems to be the perfect guy for Amelia. He was a likable lead, although by the end I still felt like I knew very little about him. I also thought that their feelings for each other moved WAY too fast to be believable. His change from being “out-to-get-her” to “I’m-so-in-love” was too quick. I thought it was fun to see Amelia at work. Amelia goes through a lot of changes and starts to really want a normal high school life. So, if you just want a quick escape and not dwell too much on the details then this is a fun read. I look forward to seeing what Shannen Crane Camp comes up with next!

If you want to read my over-analyzed review (contains spoilers), then read below.

I guess I had a hard time buying Amelia’s job. People would recognize her, even if she changes hair/clothes and schools frequently. Sure, if there are 2000+ kids in the student body most wouldn’t notice, but the kids she takes daily classes with totally would. If her teachers can see past her daily changes then of course her fellow classmates would. Also, if she is as pretty as she claims why aren’t more guys talking to her? It’s hard to believe that the only guys who are interested in her are the one’s she approaches to breakup with. I have a hard time buying that she is so pretty guys are willing to dumb their girlfriends after one meeting, but not pretty enough that no one will talk to her and no other guy is hitting on her.

I like David, but I felt he somehow got lost along the way. He was so against her job at the beginning, claiming that some of his friends had been hurt (I would have liked Amelia to acknowledge them, like “oh, yeah, I remember dumping him”). But, by the end he was on Team Amelia and wanting to be her accomplice. I liked him when he was wanting people to fight their own battles and wanting Amelia to stop and have a normal life. My other problem with the David storyline is how he was writing an article about her and nothing came of it. Amelia finds it and after reading only half (yeah right, like anyone would stop reading after half) decides to still beg him to forgive her and not even bring it up? I wanted a confrontation! He wrote some pretty mean stuff and I think she let him off the hook way to easily. In fact, I think it may have been a better story if he had published an article about her in the school paper and then had them hash things out, fight a bit and eventually get a HEA after he then got to know her, IMO.

Amelia has a LOT of inner dialog. I would have liked more conversations to propel the story. The general idea is interesting, but a lot of the time I just didn’t think things made sense. Why was her mom willing to move around all the time so Amelia could go to different school? Anyway, David lost a lot of his appeal once he became Amelia’s puppy and I wanted a big event for Amelia to open her eyes and see how she’d closed herself off and really want to make a change. But, she doesn’t and instead is going to keep doing what she’s doing, only this time David will do a “background check” to make sure her victims are worthy of their girlfriends cowardly breakups. Would he really be okay with her flirting with other guys? Changing her hair, name and personality constantly? Wouldn’t he want her to finally take the time to figure out who she is?

There were just too many things that didn’t make sense for me to love this story. Again, if I just read it without thinking then I really did think it was fun. I liked the idea and the writing was well done, I do look forward to seeing what else Shannen Crane Camp will come up with next.

Bookworm Rating: 3