A protagonist doesn’t have to be likable (see How Perfect Is That by Sarah Bird), but then she needs to be someone you love to hate. Ruth was simply annoying with her lifelong
insecurities stemming from a car accident that killed her parents and scarred her
face. I couldn’t help but feel that Ruth
saw slights even when there were none simply because of her lack of
self-confidence. Ruth became even more exasperating
when the show she’d based on her life with her grandmother got greenlit and
then she acted completely naïve to the entire process even though she’d worked
on other TV shows. Although Ruth was
clearly supposed to be sympathetic, she and her grandmother lost my respect
entirely when they were rude to a store clerk.
There were many inaccuracies and inconsistencies throughout
The Next Best Thing. These didn’t do
much damage to the plot, but were incredibly distracting. It shouldn’t be too hard to remember the ages
of characters, what they’re wearing, or what their housing situation was from
just a few pages ago. Also, with The Golden Girls being so pivotal in the shaping of Ruth, a little research on the
show (although The Golden Girls was never much for consistency in storylines itself)
would be recommended. The Next Best
Thing is entertaining despite the editing issues and annoying characters, but
it does come across as Jennifer Weiner’s revenge for her failed show, State of
Georgia (Cady’s weight loss in the book and Raven-Symoné’s real life weight
loss are a little too similar to be coincidence).
3/5
Review copy provided by the publisher, Atria.
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Just finished this as well. I did think Ruth as a bit meaner than the usual snarky heroine she writes. And you could be correct about Weiner's own Hollywood experience!
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