Project Jennifer

By Jill Amy Rosenblatt

Joan is a nice girl and, I guess like nice guys, nice girls finish last. Because her fiance has dumped her and married a woman named Jennifer. He didn't even have the guts to dump Joan himself, he had his mom do it! Which was OK by the mom because she never liked Joan. It is never said in the book, but one gets the feeling that the fact Joan is Jewish may have had a lot to do with the mom's dislike.
Anyway, to Joan, it seems that Jennifer is the picture of female perfection and Joan reasons that if she could be more like Jennifer then she would be better off, with a nice job, a good life and a boyfriend. So she decides to act like she thinks women like her rival, Jennifer, act.
She has an affair with her new boss, but figures out eventually that he is just interested in the sex and is not going to leave his wife for her. She ends up feeling pretty damaged and realizes that the whole Jennifer shtick is not working for her. It takes awhile and another less-than-perfect relationship before Joan gets her head screwed on straight and her life back on track.

For me, it's hard to sympathize with a character that gets involved with a married man, hoping he will leave his wife and marry her. That is just so low in so many ways. Plus she treats her friends like dogs simply because they make a few critical comments. For a person who is certainly old enough to know better, Joan not only dates a married man who is also her boss, she gets herself into a lot of debt trying to carry off the Jennifer lifestyle. I just didn't care for Joan very much and I was getting pretty tired of her towards the end of the book. Although I can definitely say that Joan is not a nice girl anymore!