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The Hookup Handbook, by Andrea Lavinthal and Jessica Rozler

Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2005 $14.95

Ladies: If, as a single female, your idea of a really great Saturday night on the town does not include hours traversing various hot-spots on the Chip strip, clad either in too-tall heels, a too–short skirt, or a dangerously low-cut top, The Hookup Handbook probably isn’t your best bet for a helpful read. However, for the hordes of you that typically migrate downtown each weekend night, crowding Buffalo’s deserted city streets with cosmo-fueled abandon, Lavinthal and Rozler’s guidebook to the newest way to “get together” will be, at the very least, an entertaining read. At its best, this anti-self-help book is a must-read for those in the game; offering hilarious insight, useful tips and dirty jokes. It’s hilariously funny only if you’ve (shamefully) experienced the many, all-to-common and oftentimes unappealing situations described in the text.

At its heart, this is an anti-romantic, extremely sexually-liberated look at the dating scene today’s pre and post–college grads encounter when looking for that not–so–special someone. I took it as a sort of twisted (and amusing) commentary on the fear of commitment that many of my peers so cruelly suffer through as the idea of “growing up” and settling down takes on an ever more unappealing veneer.

If you pick up this book looking for a fun, romantic Valentines’ Day read à la Bridget Jones’s Diary, I’d advise you to look elsewhere. If, however, you’re young, single, and don’t mind self-deprecating humor, Lavinthal and Rozler’s Handbook may be just the thing to combat a case of the lonely Saturday bight blues—that is, until eleven o’ clock or so, when you slip into your cutest jeans, newest cami and heels to hit the strip.

—jill froebel