The Hazards of Hunting while Heartbroken: Not a book about Assassins


While I am no stranger to a good romance novel, I must admit that Passananti's "Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken" threw me for a loop. The thing is, I misread the blurb or misunderstood it at the time I came across the novel. The book blurb references a New York City headhunter and a loose reference to the plotline. When I finally started reading it two weeks later all hope was lost for me. Too much time had passed for me to have any chance at detail oriented factual remembering. In rereading the blurb after the fact I have NO IDEA WHAT I WAS THINKING. I am laughing at myself, not with myself ;)


  • The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken (Mari Passananti)
  • 276 pages
  • Rutland Square Press LLC
  • ISBN-10: 0615493645
  • ISBN-13: 978-0615493640


My brain instantly made the misguided leaps as follow:


  1. I remember this book was about a Female Headhunter. That is super strange for a protagonist profession. I wonder how many references to Dog the bounty hunter will be slipped into this.
  2. Love story with a headhunter? WTF? This will be just strange enough to justify the reading.
  3. What a strange cover. I suppose a NYC female head hunter would try to be very well dressed, especially if she is Manhattan-based.

As you can see, I made my first wrong turn immediately and was oblivious to all reality.

This is a novel about a Corporate Headhunter, helping place highly skilled people with primo jobs in a rough market... She falls in love while still trying to get over her recently torpedoed engagement after she learned her fiance is gay. The man she starts dating seems too good to be true, and as we have learned in a post year 2000 Disney America, it is OK for prince charming to have flaws.

Imagine my surprise when I found myself embroiled not with an action filled seedy detective style plot line, but instead a white-collar office environment filled with angry bosses and trips to the opera.

Sigh, I did it to myself. Good thing I really loved the book.

Cover to cover read found this book to be well-written and highly enjoyable. The twists were not terribly surprising, but it is a love story, so it is appropriate. I could have done with fewer angsty teenage emotional responses from the 30+ age group characters, but besides that, this was a damn fine novel.

I know I know. What the hell kind of review is this. Why should others pick this up.?

Simple answer?

Because I was dead wrong.. It is a very good book that does not need a justification for reading as, no surprise to other readers, it is not about Dog the Bounty Hunter. Except for main character Zoe, As far as I can tell the other characters are too 'well to do' even to reference Dog at a drunken socialite party. Zoe however, I am sure she has binge-watched a few episodes while drips of Ben and Jerry's congeal on her rumpled sweat pants.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did ;)

--
Sourced: The author of this book was running a free ($0.00) promotion on Amazon and I picked it up there. As a book addict, finding deals like this might be my undoing.. or may one day save my life.

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