How to Get a Life in Ten Dates is a fun romance for the holiday season

Last year around the holiday season, Jenny L. Howe released On the Plus Side and since then, I’ve been eager for more. Thankfully, we’re now getting How to Get a Life in Ten Dates. 

If you’ve read Jenny L. Howe before, you’ll know that she writes plus-sized characters finding love and it’s never the romance you expect. While the book seems like it has a blueprint, this author changes it but you always want to root for the romance. 

Going into How to Get a Life in Ten Dates, the story follows our main character, Haleigh who is putting her love life in the hands of the people who know her best. Of course, we know that there is so much potential for disaster there. 

Regardless, I was incredibly excited to pick this one up and see if Jenny L. Howe would dazzle me once again. Thankfully, St. Martin’s Griffin was kind enough to send me an ARC so I was able to read and review this one. 

How to Get a Life in Ten Dates is a fun story with some unlikely tropes. 

Hadleigh is sick of being single and hearing about it. To try to remedy that, she decides to enlist the people who know her best to pick her dates. The only problem is that she’s hopelessly in love with her best friend: Jack and he’s also picking her dates. While it seems dramatic at first, this book hits all the beats you might imagine. 

Regardless, How to Get a Life in Ten Dates allows us to learn more about Hadleigh, her struggles, and the complex relationships she has with the people closest to her. From the start, most of us are rooting for Jack and hoping she’ll end up with him. The issue is that something happened while they were on vacation in Hawaii and since then, they’ve been completely platonic best friends. 

Even so, it’s clear we’re all hoping and rooting for Jack and Hadleigh to end up together. This entire thing also coincides with Hadleigh’s sister’s engagement party. As with Jenny L. Howe’s previous novels, this story is fairly low-stakes but Hadleigh does waffle a lot throughout the book on how she’s feeling and what she wants to do. At times, Hadleigh can be a frustrating character yet it makes her relatable as she’s looking to do what’s best yet it doesn’t always work out that way. 

In the end, I’m sure most of us know who Hadleigh is going to end up with but that back-and-forth makes for an entertaining read. While I can see why this book wouldn’t work for some, it was a quick and adorable romance I couldn’t stop reading. 

How to Get a Life in Ten Dates by Jenny L. Howe is out now where books are sold.