cover image Your Big Break

Your Big Break

Johanna Edwards. Berkley Publishing Group, $14 (308pp) ISBN 978-0-425-20784-0

ncEdwards's latest light read follows the professional and personal travails of Dani Myers, a 28-year-old single Bostonian who breaks hearts for a living. As employees of Your Big Break, Inc. (""It's not you, it's us!""), Dani contracts with disgruntled lovers to do the dirty work of ending their relationships. Dani encounters a conflict of interest when a voluptuous redhead hires her to dump a man she calls the ""Big Jackass,"" and who turns out to be Dani's father. Dani enlists the help of her slacker younger brother in telling their mother about the affair, and the two discover that their parents' dynamic is not what they had assumed. To greater comic effect, Edwards details Dani's ill-advised attempts at matchmaking for her clients, as she goes above and beyond her job description to promote the ""healing process."" Breaking rules plus hearts (she's not supposed to get personally involved with clients), Dani falls for one of her dumpees, Brady Simms, a handsome lawyer-turned-schoolteacher. Though ably plotted and brimming with escapist fun, this book doesn't resonate with the same humor and poignancy as did Edwards's debut, The Next Big Thing.