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I liked the premise, but there were too many wtf moments for me to stay invested in the story.

Please indulge me as I rant out my feelings on this one.

Things had a tendency to get very campy and gave off prime-time CBS sitcom vibes.
Example: The main character burned her apartment building down when she got attacked by a possum while torching love letters on a balcony, and there were no financial or criminal consequences for her.

It makes sense that this was the author's first adult novel because the main characters acted pretty juvenile despite their ages.

Olivia was so clumsy, inconsiderate, and made such poor decisions that one would think she might have an undiagnosed medical condition. That is the only reason I can think that someone who weeks earlier made herself homeless with the aforementioned possum fire, would then leave a pot of sauce simmering on the stove at her brother's apartment while she left to run errands.

Colin is marginally better. He should have just told Olivia as soon as he figured out it was her that he'd been texting. I realized he too was a lost cause much later when, instead of telling the truth, he went and roped in a coworker to pretend to be the person Olivia had been texting. What kind of dumb Two Broke Girls style antic is that?

There were a few other smaller things that bugged me too.

Why didn't Olivia have any friends? Why was her only friend an acquaintance she hadn't talked to since high school? Did people stop associating with her because she thought replacing a stainless steel colander with a cheap plastic one was appropriate?

Why didn't anyone buy her normal clothes after the fire so she didn't have to wear her high school clothes to job interviews? Like her sister-in-law couldn't lend her anything? It seems like there were several ways to resolve this lack of clothes problem and the author went with the most nonsensical one just to make Olivia uncomfortable around Colin.

Everything that had to do with alcohol felt like it was written by someone who doesn't drink. A half a bottle of wine for a three-person spaghetti dinner? 4 people had leftover bottles from a 12 pack that lasted the rest of the week? I'm not saying get trashed, but who drinks that little.

I have never been to Omaha. So maybe things work differently there. Perhaps in Omaha, a single newspaper column will get billboards and commercials, though I don't think even Dear Abby got that kind of advertisement when print media was relevant.

It was easy to ignore some of the silliness at the beginning of the book when the story was enjoyable, but things just kept getting more and more absurd.

While this book was not my cup of tea, I would definitely recommend it to someone who enjoyed the later seasons of Once Upon a Time or felt that Ross Gellar was a good romantic partner.

This should probably be a one star review, but I added an additional star because of the single mention of Nick Miller from New Girl.