Named one of Cosmopolitan’s Best Books of 2018 From the husband and wife writing duo Jennifer Miller and Jason Feifer comes Mr. Nice Guy, a funny and all too real comedy about the pursuit of success in life–and love–in today’s working world. Lucas Callahan, a man who gave up his law degree, fiancée and small-town future for a shot at making it in the Big Apple. He snags an entry-level job at Big Apple. He snags an entry-level job at Empire magazine, believing it’s only a matter of time before he becomes a famous writer. And then late one night in a downtown bar he meets a gorgeous brunette who takes him home…
Carmen Kelly wanted to be a hard-hitting journalist, only to find herself cast in the role of Empire’s sex columnist thanks to the boys’ club mentality of Manhattan magazines. Her latest piece is about an unfortunate–and unsatisfying–encounter with an awkward and nerdy guy, who was nice enough to look at but horribly inexperienced in bed.
Lucas only discovers that he’s slept with the infamous Carmen Kelly–that is, his own magazine’s sex columnist!–when he reads her printed take-down. Humiliated and furious, he pens a rebuttal and signs it, “Nice Guy.” Empire publishes it, and the pair of columns go viral. Readers demand more. So the magazine makes an arrangement: Each week, Carmen and Lucas will sleep together… and write dueling accounts of their sexual exploits.
It’s the most provocative sexual relationship any couple has had, but the columnist-lovers are soon engaging in more than a war of words: They become seduced by the city’s rich and powerful, tempted by fame, and more attracted to each other than they’re willing to admit. In the end, they will have to choose between ambition, love, and the consequences of total honesty.
“The Devil Wears Prada meets Sex and the City—a page-turner that’s part sex diary, part coming-of-age story.” —Carolyn Kylstra, editor in chief, SELF
“I COULD NOT PUT THIS BOOK DOWN!!! It totally messed up my week, it messed up my deadlines, but I absolutely loved it.” —Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians
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I COULD NOT PUT THIS BOOK DOWN!!! It totally messed up my week, it messed up my deadlines, but I absolutely loved it.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I DID NOT FINISH THIS BOOK. I read about one third of this book (to page 85) before I threw in the towel. So, maybe I don’t have the full picture, maybe it gets better, but I just could not bring myself to finish it.
Lucas moved to New York to start a career as a journalist after his fiance dumps him. After a one-night-stand, he’s shocked to find out it was with sex columnist Carmen and she’s written a take-down of his sexual prowess (or lack thereof) in her magazine! The same magazine she works for.
There were so many issues with this book. It just feels like it was written by an angry man. Lucas is that stereotypical guy who’s all, “But I’m a NICE guy, why don’t ALL women want to sleep with me?” After landing Carmen, he deigns to hit on a slightly round teacher and is SHOCKED when she turns him down. How dare a woman turn down HIM, God’s gift to women, especially one who is so homely? (This is me, pretending to be Lucas–I don’t actually think this).
And then when Lucas pens a rebuttal to Carmen’s article, he reveals details about her intimate behaviors that felt so uncomfortable. I understand that Carmen is revealing certain things about her sexual proclivities in her articles, but that’s HER choice. And when she talks about men she’s been with, those men are ANONYMOUS. For Lucas to discuss Carmen in bed not anonymously for the word to see is highly inappropriate and breaks so many privacy boundaries, I was so uncomfortable.
At page 67, I wanted to stop reading but I thought I’d give it one more chance. At page 87 when the main character did cocaine because some rich guy brought him to a “love hotel” with two beautiful “socialites” and how could Lucas say no I was DONE. Nothing could make me like Lucas. Even if he had a major character redemption and Carmen showed him the error of his ways or at least true love, I was done.
All I can think is that maybe this was supposed to be parody (and, thus, the title) and it completely missed the mark? I would not recommend this book to anyone. Women will hate it and men would get the totally wrong idea of what a “nice guy” actually is–hint, it’s one that doesn’t feel he’s entitled to have people like him.
This was not a quick read for me. It took effort to stay with the book but overall it was a decent read. The story was complex for Carmen and Lucas with the characters of Jay, Nicholas, Sofia, Tyler added to the story. It’s hard for me to understand some of the characters as deceit, entitlement, duplicity, and other negative traits we see in these characters is beyond me. I like a story to give me a definitive ending – and I felt that I had to make my own conclusion as to whether Carmen and Lucas made it as a couple. I hope this story is more fiction than a factual representation of the publishing world. We all know there is plenty of nastiness in the world but I don’t like to dwell on it when I’m escaping with a book.
I received an ARC from NetGalley and leave this honest review voluntarily.
3 Stars
Review by Elizabeth
Late Night Reviewer
Up All Night w/ Books Blog
Mr. Nice Guy by Jennifer Miller and Jason Feifer is a romantic comedy reminiscent of How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days. The blurb had me intrigued to see where the authors would take this.
Lucas leaves his home and breaks up with his fiancée to move to New York to work for a magazine. At first he is a fact checker until he goes head to head with the Sex Columnist, Carmen.
Carmen and Lucas have a one night stand which in turn she writes about in her column the next day. Carmen calls Lucas out on his experience which makes him pen a retaliation. Needless to say, that is when things start to take a turn.
Even though Lucas is having weekly encounters with Carmen to write their column, he has a sex ‘therapist’ I guess you could say, to give him pointers to improve his moves.
The concept for the story was one that had so much promise. Unfortunately I found myself pushing to finish reading. I was unable to connect with any of the characters. Carmen and Lucas had no chemistry, to me it seemed like it was forced.
Interesting concept. I will definitely be checking out more of both authors work in the future. The writing was well done this just wasn’t the book for me.
A juicy insider’s tryst through the ever-shifting world of the glossy magazines.
The concept is cute and different, which is what enticed me to request a copy from NetGalley, but I had the hardest time getting into this story. The beginning dragged on and I wasn’t emotionally invested in Lucas by the time Carmen entered the story. It took a few times of putting it down and trying again, but I finally finished it. There were definitely funny moments, but I’m heartbroken this book didn’t live up to it’s potential. Not what I was expecting, and definitely not in a good way.
Boy meets girl, boy goes home with girl, girl happens to be a sex columnist and writes a scathing article about boy, boy responds with an equally scathing letter to the magazine. Uh-oh, they both work for the same magazine. It’s not hard to see where this story is going, and it does – in a slow crawl.
Mr Nice Guy is well-written, at least in the technical sense, which is the only reason for my second star on the rating. However, technical correctness aside, this one does not live up to the hype that caught my attention and made me want to read it. Compared to The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City, a funny and all too real comedy, the ultimate RomCom. Those are just a few of things I saw about this one before reading. I found none of that.
Now, maybe it’s just my sense of humor, but at just over the 50% mark, I realized that I hadn’t laughed even once at this supposedly funny story. Not a chuckle, not even a smile, nada. And on top of that, I was bored. I didn’t like the characters, most especially our main characters, Lucas and Carmen. They are both self-absorbed, judgy, and don’t seem to care who might get hurt as they climb that invisible ladder to success. Carmen may as well be a prostitute charging by the hour with the way she uses sex to get what she wants, and Lucas, well, Lucas acts like a teenager having a tantrum most of the time. I suppose, when looking at it that way, these two are well-suited. I don’t know how they even liked themselves, let alone anyone else.
The pacing is slow, and the story is filled with way too much non-essential information. Setting the scene is important, and the reader does need to know about the jobs these people do as well as who they are and how they live their lives, but this one went a bit over the top with that. So, at around the 50% mark and 27 chapters in, I decided enough was enough. I didn’t care enough about any of the characters to want to know how their story played out, and the book was just too easy to set aside and too hard to pick back up. Life is too short for that.
I wanted to love this book. I really did, but I just could not get there. Now did I like it? Well yes and no. I liked the story plot line, but disliked the deliverance. The book was very, very slow. I had a hard time finishing it.
The characters although interesting were somewhat maddening as well. I wanted to fall in love with Lucas and Carmen, and at times I thought I might, but then when I finished the book I felt unsatisfied. As for the supporting characters, well I did not care for many of them. I especially did not like the part in the end where Lucas, his ex and her fiance’ met to talk. I felt like that was a forced issue in the story, more like a selfish act on Lucas’s part.
At times in the story I felt there were tidbits that just did not belong or useless information. Like the bag of ties. What was the purpose of the ties being left behind but never returned? The big finale was not what I imagined it would be. I was expecting Lucas, being a journalist, to do a huge write-up in Noser to out his boss, with pictures of proof and all. Or I expected jail time for Nick and Jays.
With the expectation of this being a rom-com book, I would have expected a happy ending, declaration of love or so some sort. The ending of this book just left me feeling meh. I was neither excited, happy nor content. I just think it fell flat leaving me unsatisfied.
Overall the book has a good base line story. Some characters were interesting. There were some key parts of the story that were meaningful, even though they were not delivered well. It did have some life experiences that made the book feel somewhat relatable. I liked it well enough, but it was not a favorite. Overall I have to give this book a 3 star rating.
Mr. Nice Guy had all the great components of a classic rom-com. The high profile, out of most guys’ league female. A male lead struggling to find his place in the big city. An awkward one night stand. And a shocking reveal of a shared connection between the two lovers. This story felt really similar to the likes of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
It started out slow, diving into the minutia of Lucas’ employment and day to day life. About 50% through the read is when the story really started picking up and became intriguing. The back and forth banter between Lucas and Carmen through their columns was hilarious and witty. I was truly rooting for the couple!
I fancied the story once it picked up the pace and big things started happening. The thrill and the suspense that followed the couple’s journalism adventures as well as the drama taking place within Empire was enjoyable. The fallout that followed was emotional and shocking. I felt the authors did a great job wrapping up the story and giving closure to all characters you started to care about in the story.
3/5 stars
Not much I can tell you about this one other than it wasn’t my cup of tea. Lucas was cringe worthy at times and made me roll my eyes (which with the headache I’m nursing was not a good thing) and Carmen, though better, we needed more of her. Pitting them against each other in the work place was so unprofessional especially when they should have been a one and done. Frankly, if this had been a shorter book and condensed to get rid of some of the blah-blah-blah it would have been better and probably could have shown more promise.
On the surface, Mr. Nice Guy is about two people criticizing each others sexual performance on a public platform. Carmen is a sex columnist for popular magazine: Empire. Lucas is an invisible fact checker for the same magazine who is unknowingly and anonymously featured in Carmen’s column after a one-night stand. But when Carmen’s no-holds-barred honesty and vicious criticism gets under Lucas’ skin, he drafts a sincere and well-written reply under the pseudonym: Mr. Nice Guy, and the back and forth gets everyone’s attention as the ratings multiply. The head of the magazine obviously wants to capitalize on this, so assignments are given to the duo on a weekly basis. The column is called Screw the Critics and the name says it all.
I choose to believe a good part of this book is satire in nature. It’s too over-the-top to believe otherwise. But the themes that stood out to me held a lot of substance in my opinion, such as: media ethics and authenticity, giving women a voice in an age that is not as feminist as many may think, the importance of communicating with one’s partner about sex, and the lengths that a woman must go through to get a little power in a man’s world. In addition to all this, there’s a little bit of mystery, romance with surprising vulnerability, climactic betrayal, slow redemption, and a love note to New York City where this story is set. Married authors: Jennifer Miller and Jason Feifer have co-written an interesting story with a wide range. I will be interested to see what they come up with next.
Thank you to the following for permitting me access to an advance reader’s copy (ARC) of Mr. Nice Guy. This generosity did not impact my honesty when rating/reviewing.
Source: NetGalley
Author: Jennifer Miller; Jason Feifer
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press, St. Martin’s Griffin
Genres: Romance, Women’s Fiction
Pub Date: October 16, 2018