Rowena’s review of We Can Work it Out (Lonely Hearts Club #1) by Elizabeth Eulberg.

When Penny Lane started The Lonely Hearts Club, the goal was simple: to show that girls didn’t need to define themselves by how guys look at them, and didn’t have to value boyfriends over everything else. Penny thought she’d be an outcast for life…but then the club became far more popular than she ever imagined it would be.

But what happens when the girl who never thought she’d date a good guy suddenly finds herself dating a great one? She doesn’t need a boyfriend… but she wants it to work out with this particular boyfriend. And he wants it to work out with her.

Only, things keep getting in the way. Feelings keep getting hurt. Words keep getting misunderstood.

Penny Lane worked hard to declare her independence. Now she needs to figure out what to do with it — and how to balance what she wants with what everyone else wants. In We Can Work It Out, Elizabeth Eulberg returns to the world of her first novel, The Lonely Hearts Club, and gets to the heart of how hard relationships can be… and why they are sometimes worth all the drama and comedy they create.

I’ve been looking forward to reading this book ever since I found out that it was coming out. I enjoyed Penny and Ryan from The Lonely Hearts Club and while I did enjoy parts of this book, most of it drove me up the wall.

So this book takes place not too long after the end of The Lonely Hearts Club. Penny has founded the girls club The Lonely Hearts Club and all girls who have had their hearts broken are welcome to join. They have fun together, they are there for each other and while that’s all fine and dandy, I found their whole club thing tiresome. They were much too busy and they had too many damn rules. It was all sisters before misters, all of the time that I felt like they turned themselves into little heart breakers themselves.

Penny stretches herself too thin in this book and instead of me feeling bad for her, I stayed pissed off at her. This book is about Penny finding balance between the club, her school work and dating Ryan. It was like she felt because she started the club, they should always come first and everything else in her life took a back seat. I thought Ryan took a back seat to the club for far too long that by about the middle of the book, I thought Ryan should dump Penny for good because he deserved someone that would put him first some of the time. I mean, on top of always coming in second to the club, he had to deal with her not wanting to act like a couple while they were in public because someone from the club might see.

It was all so stupid that it made me see why some adults don’t like to read YA books.

Ryan was too perfect. He settled for a lot in this book and I wasn’t a fan of that because he was one of the good guys. Yeah, Penny does eventually get her head out of her butt but I spent too long wanting to strangle her for the way that she acted throughout the book. From the way she treated Ryan to the way she judged Missy after getting to know her. She didn’t even try to understand where Missy was coming from and that wasn’t cool. She’s supposed to be this leader and one thing doesn’t go her way so she immediately stands judge and jury over others? Ugh.

I will say that though there were things that bugged me about this book. There were things that I did like. I liked meeting Bruce. I liked Tracy and Diane. I liked Tracy’s reasons for not wanting to get in a relationship. I liked that Tracy called Penny on her crap because we all need a friend like that in our lives and I enjoyed Penny’s family…though the whole Beatles thing with her parents was a bit overwhelming.

All in all, this book didn’t live up to the hype I was building up about it in my head but I think that fans of Eulberg will enjoy it. Younger fans definitely.

Grade: 2.5 out of 5

Reading Order:

This book is available from Point. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.