Cover Image: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do... But You Could've Done Better

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do... But You Could've Done Better

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Member Reviews

This is a very clever idea, bad break up stories illustrated with simple comics. I mean, who doesn't love a good bad break up?

But this book is severely lacking. It needs something more, either more stories and less comics, or funnier comics and less story. There's just not enough here to justify the book itself. Which is a shame, because again, the idea is fantastic.

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Full of heart, laughter and reality. A refreshing, thoroughly hilarious book that follows the stories of people who went through awful break-ups while the amazing cartoonist, Hilary, captures the essence of that sorrowful experience effortlessly in a well-crafted and executed cartoon.

I loved the structure of the book; the typography and layout as well as how it went about with the stories followed by the cartoons made it easier to follow and read. The cartoons, the least to say, were aesthetically pleasing, beautiful and utterly appropriate - amazingly in sync with every reminisced break-up story. I did not found any that didn't narrate the story itself.

The stories were real. And that's all there is to explain - sad, terrible and hilarious, making you bury all hopes of ever being in a decent relationship, but real. I wanted some to be longer, more detailed so that I could connect better but at the end of the day, I respected other people's experiences - if they wanted to write three lines about their break-up then that's what we should get to read.

Overall, a super short, humorous, very realistic and cute (in a weird way) book, filled with positivity and an important message: Get rid of terrible people in your life, the first chance you get!

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This was not what I expected. I think I was expecting more commentaries to the stories. Like "That sure was bad, this is how you should have done it..." or "You think that was bad, imagine if it had happened like this...".

But still, it was a funny book. It make strange breakups look a lot more normal, and the normal not so bad after all. It is a quick book I think I would have enjoyed if I happened to be in a bad breakup which would be hard to get over.

The cartoons where nice and quirky (in a good way), but I would like to see them take more space in the book. Some of the stories could have had more than just one picture.

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Short, funny book on how realign ships were ended. Some are hilariously funny. My favorite was the lady who had her things delivered to her office and her boss stepping over her undies. Cute hand drawn pics, but some of them were kind of childish looking. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

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Love does strange things to us and most have experienced the hardship of a break up at any age. The book is a collection of real life stories depicting the humorous side of a relationship split. .I particularly liked the one where the guy asked for his gift back, which turned out to be black lingerie! It is a short and easy read, maybe helpful if you have been in the situation and the cartoons which accompany the stories are cute and funny.

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If you love reading about crazy and funny true breakups at all ages with drawings that show the breakup, this is the book for you. I loved how right to the point the breakups were. They were each only a paragraph or three long with a hilarious drawing of the breakup, but these breakups were unusual and very entertaining. There were breakups with pregnancy scares, game boys thrown at heads, and one that even caused two heart attacks, yes two! This was just really fun to read. I highly recommend to anyone who wants a good laugh.

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I was looking forward to reading this book as I thought it would be relatable and amusing. Granted, the anecdotes were quite amusing (some more so than others), but they seemed at times to be so far-fetched that they were difficult to believe.

I really liked the illustrations - they were a really nice touch and really well done.

I read through this book in little over half an hour, and I was glad to have had the eBook version - I couldn't help wondering what I would have done with a hard copy. Once you've read through all of the disastrous dumping stories, you're highly unlikely to read through them again and this book would therefore get sent to the charity shop. I can see that it might make a nice novelty gift for someone that has just been dumped as a way of cheering them up; however, as someone who has very recently been dumped, this didn't bring me enough joy or amusement that I would recommend this to anyone else.

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2.5/3 Stars.

This book was sort of a letdown for me . Perhaps I was expecting too much but this was just alright in my opinion. It's a book that was made with really good intentions so I find it hard to say harsh things about it. The author says she was inspired to write this book after she drew a picture about her bad breakup and it made her laugh. She thought she could help others by making them laugh and so her intention was really lovely. However, I'm not judging this book on intentions...

I'll start with the stories themselves. I felt like as a whole, the stories were not long enough. Some stories just needed to be longer so that they could evoke something more in me because they weren't good enough to leave a lasting impression. The bulk of these stories didn't end up being memorable because they didn't evoke any emotion in me or make me laugh unfortunately. There were a couple that I did like though. Another problem I had with the stories was the fact that they read like a magazine section where people submitted their breakup stories and that wouldn't really be appealing to me.

The drawings were cute and I'm glad that the author gets to do what she loves but I felt like some of the drawings were redundant. They just didn't add anything to the overall stories in a lot of cases. The ones that were my favourite were the ones that weren't literal depictions of the stories.

This book would probably be better if you were actually going through some romantic heartbreak. So I would definitely recommend this book to heartbroken people.

*I received a copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"To that one dude, for being such an inspirational dick."

"People are terrible and they do terrible things to each other and yet still we wake up every morning and we have hope that maybe someday someone won't be so terrible..."

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This is another case of the title being what the book is about. Surprise. This is a little book of bad break up stories. Ones where there were misunderstandings. Ones where there was hurt. Ones that were cute, and ones that are sad.

Most of the stories have a little cartoon associated with each story.

This is not a sit down and read all the way through. This is more of a bathroom book, for quickly getting in and out, and coming back to later. Nothing wrong with that.


Thanks o Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

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Thank you to Netgalley, Animal Media Group LLC, and Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell for the chance to read and review this ARC;

This book was a rip-roaring and heart-paining rollercoaster from the word go. You'll find yourself laughing and wincing as you turn every page, delighted in the art and finding yourself kith and kin to the people in the stories. I found myself thinking of my own breakups and seeing my own choices in those on the pages, both confessions of how people had broken up with others and how they had been dumped by others.

I definitely will purchase a copy of this when it comes out and I hope there are more stories that still get submitted from the contact info at the end of the book, so that there will be even more pieces to read once it is published.

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<i>"Everyone says you're a great guy."</i>
This short book combines comedic tragic stories of breakups alongside cute cartoons.
Great fun.
<i> "After all this time with you, I'm still waiting to meet that guy they're talking about."</i>

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This book includes little vignettes of pretty awful break-ups written by other people, with accompanying comics/drawings by the book's author. I can see this being a funny read long after the end of a relationship (if you're morbidly curious like I am), and some of the comics made me laugh out loud. But probably don't read this while the wounds are still fresh. Some of these break-up stories are truly awful, and some of them are even told by the truly awful people who perpetuated them, and they WILL make you angry.

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A fun, quick read. Some of the stories were pretty funny, others fairly run-of-the-mill. The cartoons were cute but not especially funny or necessary to drive home the points of the stories.

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I thought the premise of the book would be fun, especially since the introduction gave the impression, to me, that the stories would be more from the perspective of the one who was not "terrible" (Campbell's word) rather than from the perspective of the, well, terrible is too kind. I don't want to hear the story from the side of the a-hole then have a cutesy cartoon (to make them feel better? I dunno.). Not to mention some of the stories appeared to be fabricated (I don't mean by Campbell, I mean by the people giving her the stories) and far too convoluted to be real. Maybe I'm wrong but either way those stories (the ones I think are false and the ones from a-holes) made the book as a whole a disappointment for me.

To be fair, some of the stories and the accompanying cartoon were very funny. The harsh break-ups were easier to take when they were done by middle school and high school kids as compared to "adults."

While I would still recommend the book but with the warning that there are some stories that are not funny, cute or even groan-inducing and the cartoons can't redeem those. But the cartoons are cute and for the most part adds to or even compensates for the stories they represent.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

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I thought it would be a nice graphic novel, but it ended up being just stories of people breaking up with one image that fit the story. I did get through it pretty quickly, but I was rather disappointed to find out it wasn't an actual graphic novel.

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This book isn't too original, but it was a really fun read. I should probably feel more ashamed of myself for being grateful that I'm not one of the people in this book, but I'm not. I'm not sure I would market this as a comic strip collection. It's more of a PostSecret type book where people have submitted stories that could be published. Nonetheless, this was a quick, fun little read that lets people know that sometimes you can find humor after heart ache (or crazy stupid situations).

4 out of 5 stars

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2,5 *

Cute and funny, this book kept me entertained for about 20 minutes. I liked it, but I was definitely expecting more. Sure, some stories were unbelievable hilarious and others super crazy, but they were so short, and the writing felt so simple and somehow rushed. I really liked the illustrations, though, most times even more than the story.

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This short book is a compilation of breakup vignettes alongside the cartoon image that Campbell imagined should accompany it. Some of the breakups are nothing short of ridiculous... others shared the whiplash moments of, "What just happened? Was that real life?"

It was a quick read--it just left me feeling "ehh. Breaking up is hard."

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