Book Review: The Break-Up Artist by Erin Clark and Laura Lovely

‘The Break-Up Artist’ by Erin Clark and Laura Lovely was an audible original novella, and is only available to listen to with an Audible subscription. It tells a compelling story of grief, jealousy, miscommunications, imposter syndrome and all the nuanced issues with falling in love.

Zelda Reynolds has a lot on her plate. She lost her mother in a car accident just a year ago and her father has eloped with one of Zelda’s former university classmates, Amanda, essentially forcing a rift between her and her father. Her boss, Georgina is a tyrant, withholding promotions and trying to take credit for all her colleagues’ work.

Zelda works at a marketing agency as Georgina’s executive assistant, but desperately wants to use her degree in creative writing to actually do something creative and write. She and her friends from work, Margot and Randi, have been scheming behind the scenes about leaving the company and launching their own marketing firm, which they nicknamed ‘Fire Brand’.

Furthermore, outside of work, Zelda has a side-gig, that she doesn’t actually get paid for, but uses as catharsis, called The Break Up Artist. Having drunkenly decided to pitch to the world via lamposts that they can have an anonymous entity essentially ghostwrite a text breakup for you, after angrily, drunkenly dumping a friend’s cheating ex for her, Zelda utilises these requests for breakups to help people get out of an awkward, emotionally-charged situation.

After a bad day, Zelda sends a break-up to a woman called Rachel, for her partner Jacobe, who she regards as uninspired, unmotivated, a barista who watches cartoons and has no drive to better himself. Rachel’s wording is harsh and negative, and something Zelda would usually dismiss as someone who has to break up on her own, due to her nastiness, but with her pent-up ire and annoyance, she goes ahead and writes a bitter and scathing email for Rachel to tweak and send to Jacobe.

She never expected to know, and grow to like the man she wrote such harsh, nasty things about.

For such a short listen, this book really does pack a lot of punches. Although I was frustrated with Zelda for her putting herself in the situation she found herself in with Jake, what really threw me in this story was how the authors navigate the idea of grief and how it causes clashes.

For example, Zelda’s younger sister Zoey, who is only seventeen, feels like her new stepmother, Amanda, is unwanted in her space, and as a father to a younger child, I felt like Zelda’s father should have been much more mindful of what his youngest felt about Amanda. Instead, he is so determined not to infantalise his disabled eldest daughter, he inadvertently seems to treat Zelda and Zoey like they’re the same age, like he hasn’t given his daughter no time to mourn her mother, and suddenly move another woman in. Let alone a woman his eldest daughter knows, went to university with and didn’t like much.

I found myself incredibly frustrated with the Amanda plotline. Amanda’s cousin being the infamous Rachel, and her overhearing Zelda and Zoey complaining about Amanda, and being confident that these are Amanda’s stepchildren was a huge reach. And then to top it off, Rachel, having decided she hasn’t stirred up enough trouble in Zelda’s life, she decides that she made a mistake dumping Jacobe and intends to expose Zelda as The Breakup Artist. Ah yes, just doxx someone for the sake of it, after all, a red-headed woman in a wheelchair in a small town in Minnesotta, especially one with such a common name as Zelda – of course there’s no chance people would be able to identify her just going on about her day. She was recognisible and it was abhorrent that Rachel was willing to do that.

Add that to the plotline about Zelda needing to apologise to Amanda for making fun of her behind her back, and being hostile to her because she had come into her father’s life and married him six months later. No, of course it’s all Zelda’s fault. To be honest, if I wasn’t so intrigued to see whether Zelda launched her business in the end, I would have dropped the book right there and then. I would have cut my dad off completely if he did that a year after the sudden death of my mother – especially if, like Zelda, I had believed their love was the pinnacle of romance.

I did, however, enjoy the subplot about Fire Brand, and escaping a toxic work environment. But as a freelancer, being able to bag a stellar, well-funded client at the first go, on a whim, was insane to me. Now that would be a dream come true. Book boyfriends be damned. I want a Fire Brand for myself.

Overall, I didn’t hate this book – in fact, at points I rather enjoyed it – but it wasn’t something I would actively recommend to others, despite its positive plot points, like the active dismissal and shut down of ableism from the main characters, because the shortfalls were enough to make me want to stop reading. I wouldn’t recommend it, personally, but if you like an upbeat, feminist, representative romcom, and don’t mind a bit of suspension of disbelief with a father falling in love so quickly, go for it – you have nothing to lose. Who knows, it could be your next favourite book?