The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing By Melissa Bank

This is a series of adventures in the life of Jane and the world of dating and love affairs. It is a nice experience to read about a close family, parents and an adult brother, Henry, our narrator, and his teenage sister, Jane. This is a nice, normal family–they care for each other and treat each other with love and respect, regardless of a difference of opinion–or an unsuitable girlfriend.

And Henry does bring home an assortment of girlfriends–with each one he is a changed man–sometimes in suits, sometimes not, but always to suit the current girlfriend. The family takes this all in stride, and Melissa Banks writes about it with a delightfully easy sense of humour.

There is the summer of Henry and Julia, while the family is spending the summer on the Jersey shore, Jane reading the Great Gatsby. Next we find Jane is working as an editorial assistant in New York and discovering the world of urban hunting and fishing.

She reads about love at work and looks for it for herself, sometimes finding it, and finding it difficult. Returning home during the time of her father’s final illness, Jane finds herself making decisions and observances that come with maturity. It is a young woman growing up.

This book will make you laugh and cry, maybe even for yourself, as you remember the unsuitable boyfriends of your past, and the ones that felt so right and didn’t last.