How to Be Single by Liz Tuccillo

This book had great potential, and many great moments, but doesn’t deliver in the end.  After a night out with her four single girlfriends, Julie decides to travel the globe interviewing single women for a book about dating in different cultures.  It’s a great premise, except that Julie gets air sick every time she flies and is too shy to talk to strangers on her own. Fortunately, one of her friends is able to fly across the world to each country she visits to hold her hand. And in every country she visits she immediately hooks up with a young swinger who invites her to parties every single night where her friends are able to get a conversation related to her book started. I found these scenarios to be totally unbelievable. Did I mention she’s gotten a nice advance from her publisher? There were scenes that resonated with me, but most were those happening back in New York with Julie’s friends. Serena has joined an Ashram, and found it to be different from what she had anticipated. After her divorce, Georgia is lost and stumbling through her life much the same as we all do after a big emotional blow. Alice has found the perfect man…or has she? And Ruby longs for a baby and is sorting through the decisions involved in intentionally becoming a single mother. Probably OK for a quick, light read, but for a more substantial travel novel try Anne Cushman’s Enlightenment for Idiots.