Review: Misfortune Cookie by Michelle Gorman

Reviewer: Rowena
Misfortune Cookie (Single in the City #2) by Michele Gorman
Series: Single in the City #2
Also in this series: The Twelve Days to Christmas (Single in the City #3)
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: March 22nd 2012
Genres: Contemporary Romance
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Series Rating:

Would you move 6,000 miles to be with the love of your life?

Hannah did. Unfortunately her plan isn't going terribly well. What was supposed to be a move to Hong Kong to start a wonderful new life with Sam is turning into a move to Hong Kong to spend occasional weekends with Sam, when he can get away from an unanticipated work assignment on the opposite side of the South China Sea. Still, she's optimistic, if woefully unprepared for the intricacies of Hong Kong.

Stumbling through the alien city, which she loves, she starts to build a life for herself. Things definitely look up when she finds a great boss to work for, and her best friend Stacy moves to the city too. But alarm bells ring as Sam seems to be getting a bit too cozy with his boss. And when things start going wrong at work, Hannah can't help but wonder if she's made the biggest mistake of her life.

REVIEWS

“Light, funny, and thoroughly entertaining, Misfortune Cookie is a book that I can absolutely recommend. It was well-written and well-edited and it offered me a fascinating glimpse into what life in Hong Kong would be like for an outsider living there.” The Book Chick

“Fans of Sex in the City, the Shopaholic series, and Lindsay Kelk’s I Heart Series will appreciate Gorman’s novel and her easy to root for heroine and the hilarious situations she tends to find herself in.” Novel Escapes

This book follows Hannah from the book Single in the City by Michele Gorman as she moves from London to Hong Kong to be closer to her new boyfriend Sam. Sam and Hannah got together and then Sam gets a job offer in China and he’d be a fool to turn it down so he takes the job and not wanting to end his relationship with Hannah, tells her that she should think about moving there. He never said, move there with him but Hannah (like any normal woman in the world) assumed that he wanted her to move there with him. As in, move in with him. When that turns out not to be the case, Hannah still moves out there and tries to go for a fresh beginning. In Single in the City, she moved from the states (where she’s from) to England and in Misfortune Cookie, she moves from England to China. This girl brings fresh beginnings new international meaning.

As the story progressed, one of the things that got on my nerves was Hannah. She was so insensitive about everything under the sun and she was the most insecure woman I’ve read about in a long time. She loves Sam so much that she moved COUNTRIES to be with him and when he doesn’t make time for her, when he doesn’t move to Hong Kong the way that he said he would, instead of confronting him about all of this (I mean, she DID move to China to be closer to him), she starts freaking out about everything under the sun inside her head. Everyone in her family, her best friend all think that she made a rash decision and even though they’re right, she’s living her life and I would have been fine with that if she was more secure in her own decisions. She’s already in China. She already made the decision but she second guessed herself so many different times in this book that I was sighing all over the place (and not in a good way). I wished that she was more upfront with everything she was thinking about with Sam. I wish she was more upfront with how she dealt with a lot of things that were going on in her life because she would have enjoyed her time in China far more and for far longer if she would have just opened her mouth.

There’s a part of the book where Hannah is out for her birthday with her friends and Sam’s best friend Pete is trying to get the scoop from Hannah herself about why Sam (Hannah’s boyfriend) isn’t in town for her birthday. He was called away on work, couldn’t get away. By this point in the book, he’s been doing that a lot and I really hated that Hannah kept cancelling on Stacy, her best friend (who moved to China for Hannah) so that she could catch up with her boyfriend. He kept cancelling their plans together and then usurping the best friend’s time and by that part in the book, I was mighty annoyed with Sam. It’s not like Pete was trying to be rude or anything, he was just making polite conversation and Hannah gets all defensive and I was right back to being annoyed with her. She calls Pete insecure when the only person who was insecure at that table was, Hannah.

There’s a lot of back and forth with Hannah but one of the things that I appreciated with Ms. Gorman is that even when Hannah got on my hot damn nerves the most, for some reason, I still liked her and wanted what was best for her. The only way that I can describe the connection that I felt toward Hannah is that she was like that friend or sister that kept messing up and yet I couldn’t help but want her to pick herself up and get right back on track. I wanted to like her and I’m glad that I stuck with this book because in the end, Hannah got it right. The thing that I appreciated most about Gorman’s writing was that she made this book interesting enough that I wanted to read the rest of the book. Like so many other books before this one, I would have given up but Hannah wasn’t playing stupid games or getting herself into trouble because she was careless or anything. She was just a normal young woman, living in China and trying to get by. She could have been one of my nieces and as mad as I got at her, I kept coming back because I wanted her to get it right.

I wanted her to get it right because somewhere in the middle there, I really came to care for Hannah.  She may have been a bumbling idiot from time to time but she was always a good person.  She admitted when she was wrong and when she’s finally confronted with the reality of her relationship with Sam, she took the step back that she needed to so that she could get herself back to level ground.  I admired the heck out of her for what she went through in this book and when she finally stood up for herself, I got a bit teary eyed. I was so hot damn proud of her that I wanted to hug her tight.

And Sam? He was a total douche in this book so the more mad that I got at him, the more I wondered how Gorman was going to make me come to like him again.  I felt like he betrayed me with the way that I felt while reading but I was glad that I continued reading on.

I liked Hannah’s friends and her boss Josh. They made the story more enjoyable than it would have been if we were just stuck with Hannah’s bumbling self throughout the entire book. Hannah had a great support group and I loved that Stacy never sugarcoated anything about Hannah. If Hannah needed someone to give her a stern talking to, Stacy did it without question. She was a good friend to Hannah and I loved her. I ended up liking this book. I’m not sorry that I read it but it took a bit for me to warm up to Hannah but when I did, I was a huge Hannah fan.  I really liked that Gorman showed us the transformation in Hannah from beginning to end.  It made the end that much more satisfying.  This wasn’t an easy book to read but it really was worth the time I spent reading it, at least for me it was.

Grade: 4 out of 5

This book is available from Createspace. You can buy it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the author for an honest review.

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