It had been low-key, sweet, lovely. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t the real thing. It never had done. Just because it wasn’t surprising hadn’t meant it wasn’t right.
“The Good, the Bad, and the Dumped” by Jenny Colgan is about a woman who meets with her exes to find out why her past relationships didn’t work after getting engaged.
When Posy’s fiancé dumps her, she decides to start meeting her exes and talking to them in person to find out what went wrong in their relationships.
She realises her past relationships weren’t like what she remembered and that she fantasised many of them. By meeting with her exes, she finds out who her true love is. This is a cute story with many funny moments.
Posy is worried about making the wrong choice and marrying the wrong person. Could this relationship have worked? There are many humorous parts throughout the book and important perspectives.
There’s a lot of poignancy that could be missed if readers just concentrate on the title or the overall storyline of revisiting exes to see what went wrong. The things Posy discovers about her past are meaningful and relatable, I think that many of us today are affected more by our pasts than we care to admit and seeing Posy’s struggles can promote some self-examination.
To be entirely sure, Posy tracks down her first boyfriend from college, just to see what could’ve been and to make sure that Matt is the perfect man for her.
But when Matt gets wind of that, he isn’t exactly delighted and breaks off the engagement. Now, Posy starts to wonder why all her other relationships failed and goes off in search of her two remaining ex-boyfriends to find out.
Posy is happy when Matt, a personal trainer and her boyfriend of many years, proposes to her on top of a mountain. However, as in love with him as she is, she feels a small hesitation. What if Matt isn’t The One? Led by doubt, she decides to revisit her exes to see where they are in life, and to fully close the door on her past.
Driven especially by an anti-marriage psychotherapist mother and a rocky relationship with her father, Posy doesn’t know if she’s ready to commit to a lifelong partnership with Matt and wants to ensure that he is Mr Right.
As she travels to Scandinavia and beyond, Posy is heartbroken when she learns that Matt has called off the engagement. But her despair causes her to lean into her past even more. Why did her relationships fail? Readers will wonder if curiosity killed the cat (or, in this case, the engagement).
It was fascinating to discover that each of Posy’s boyfriends reflected her at the time, a realisation that helps her gain a better sense of what she’s looking for in a relationship.
I adored this trip down memory lane and appreciated her introspection. People change over time, and Colgan does a superb job of illustrating how they develop to be more of themselves as they grow older.
While I enjoyed the concept and the journey, I was a bit disappointed in the relationship between Posy and Matt. In the first few pages, Posy talks about how they were an unlikely match.
There seemed to be doubt and awkwardness even at the beginning, and this stayed with me for the duration of the book. I didn’t feel as emotionally invested in their love story as I thought I would be, and I wished that there had been more romance. I still am not sure how they were ever compatible in the first place.
The plot of “The Good, the Bad, and the Dumped” seems familiar because we’ve seen something like it with that Ryan Reynolds’ movie “Definitely Maybe” in which a man looks back at his past relationships. And it works. If you can look at the past as a mature adult and allow others to be truthful about their feelings and about you, you can learn a lot. Posy does.
But, in some ways, I felt icky about Posy’s romp through the past because it seemed like she was being unfaithful to a good guy who cared about her. On the flipside, she wasn’t certain that she was in a relationship that made her happy (even though she stayed around). Would the best thing be to marry someone under those circumstances? This is why I waffle about Posy’s quest.
“The Good, the Bad, and the Dumped” contains a lot of humorous observations, laugh-out-loud snark, and genuine feelings. At the end of the day, however, I just felt like it was missing a little something. Maybe it was connected to the building up of the character with no name, the Lord Voldemort, who I expected to break the shutters off the windows, but alas, I was disappointed. Maybe I wish that the ending had been drawn out a bit better.
Yes, there was a grand ending, but there should have been something significant just before it. Maybe I read this too close to “The Loveliest Little Chocolate Shop in Paris”, which was extremely lovely and invites immediate comparisons.
There are many moral values that were so thoughtful, touching and very useful for readers, namely living in love and respecting each other, loyalty and religious message. This book teaches people to live in love and appreciate each other.
I really liked Posy and could identify with her feelings about her life and needing to sort out her past before moving on to the present. What didn’t work so well was the flow of the story.
To wrap this up, I just have to say I highly recommend this book. “The Good, the Bad, And the Dumped” is a funny and lightly thought-provoking novel that takes us down a common hypothetical train of thought about exes. Overall, I rate this book 5/5 stars based on its story, characters and message.
