How to Tell If Your Boyfriend Is the Antichrist | Book Review

14Jan/090

How to Tell If Your Boyfriend Is the Antichrist | Book Review

I'm kicking off the every-week-until-stupid-Valentine's-Day book review with one of my favorite sort-of dating books.

How to Tell If Your Boyfriend Is the Antichrist
(And If He Is, Should You Break Up With Him?)
by Patricia Carlin
Full disclosure: Pat's my cousin. When she showed me the first copies of this book one Christmas, I could not put it down. I literally sat in a corner and read every page, laughing the entire time and ignoring my family, who I only get to see about once a year. That's how engrossing this book is.

Because really, what girl hasn't wondered if her boyfriend is the antichrist, obsessive-compulsive, a renegade cop, a pedophile, etc. Sometimes our judgement gets clouded. And then what if he is one of those things? Is it really a deal-breaker?

Pat tells you the answer, in deeply dark -- as in pitch-black -- humor. One of her pearls of wisdom to those women who discover that they're dating aliens is "And don't forget the birth control, unless you want a fetus exploding from your abdomen sometime soon." A warning sign that you're dating a hit man: "Your boss has a broken nose and treats you with a newfound respect." Or that you're dating a married man: "Automatically takes out the trash after having sex because he assumes it's Tuesday."

It's not the usual light, cheesy, simplistic gift-book writing; it's smart, clever, and hilariously twisted. I laugh every time I flip through it.