The Good Bride Guide

by Matt Dunn

[Leah]

Ben Grant has just been dumped by his 29th girlfriend. Not only that but he is also having to face his thirtieth birthday which is rapidly approaching. Desperate to find the perfect woman, like his friend Ash who is having an arranged marriage with Priti, Ben sets out to find himself his perfect bride. He enlists the help of his parents in his bid to find his perfect bride but soon finds out that the women his parents pick out for him just aren’t for him. His parents, however, love the idea and set about their task with gusto. After a bunch of disastrous dates, Ben calls off his search for the perfect bride. But what will happen when Ben meets his ideal woman?

I’m a huge fan of Matt Dunn and have enjoyed two of his previous works: The Ex-Boyfriends Handbook (an oustanding read) as well as From Here to Paternity (which I enjoyed, too). So when Simon and Schuster offered me the chance to read Matt’s new one The Good Bride Guide, I jumped at the chance.

I absolutely loved The Good Bride Guide. I thought the plot was brilliant and incredibly unique. Matt is excellent at tapping into the male mind and giving us incredibly enjoyable reads. I loved Ben’s quest to find himself the perfect bride and laughed out loud on many occasions. It was very amusing seeing all of the girls Ben’s parents picked out for him and you could see a mile off that none of them were really what Ben was looking for.

I liked Ben as a character and enjoyed reading of his conflict regarding marriage. In one way, to Ben, marriage is the perfect commitment but also could it all just be a ruse? Do relationships really have to come down to marriage or can you live in perfect harmony without it? I thought it added an interesting insight. I could understand completely Ben’s cynicism regarding marriage but I could also see the flip side – after all, his parents were (and continue to be) happily married even after thirty years.

Ben’s parents were a huge part of the book and I thoroughly enjoyed their presence. Their relationship came across as an incredibly easy one yet there was a secret lurking in their past that, while I wondered of it, I didn’t really see it coming. The scenes between parents and son made the book a pleasure to read and their relationship didn’t seem at all forced. His dad was hilarious particularly when Ben and himself went clubbing. It’s definitely a bad idea to take your parents clubbing.

I also liked Ash, who was Ben’s best friend and “manager” (Ben is an artist). Their friendship was believable and I enjoyed the banter between the two. I also liked how easy Ash agreed to his arranged marriage and how open-minded he was regarding the whole thing. I thought Priti, his bride to be, was his perfect partner and she was also incredibly nice. The scene where Ben meets Priti for the first time was really funny: Ben mis-hears Priti and thinks she lives in Dhundi, India when in actual fact she comes from Dundee, Scotland.

Another constant in the book was Seema, Ash’s sister. She wasn’t a huge presence and was only in a few times really but whenever she was she lit up the book. The constant banter and teasing between Ben and Seema was great to read and very well done by Matt.

Ben also attends writing classes and my favourite member of those classes was Terry, a cabbie. His observations regarding relationships were priceless yet totally unhelpful to Ben.

The Good Bride Guide was a really great read and one I wholly recommend. One word of caution though, NEVER let your parents pick you out a bride.