Wednesday, February 29, 2012

I Wish I Never Met You by Denise N. Wheatley

photo courtesy of Amazon.com
Released: August 2004

Narrated in first-person, I Wish I Never Met You by Denise N. Wheatley is a novel mainly comprised of short stories about horrifying dating experiences.

Each short chapter has a funny name (such as "Doug the Heinous Dragon" and "Bubba the Bogus-Ass Baller,") and is about a man the narrator dated but wishes she had never met—just like the book title suggests.

Dreamworld's Review

Hmm. Where to start with this one...

Sitting at a little over 200 pages, I Wish I Never Met You originally attracted me because the cover blurb states that the novel is a "hilarious, uncensored confession of one woman, reeling from a lifetime of dating disasters...she'll have you laughing out loud." A photograph of the smiling and beautiful author Denise N. Wheatley is featured on the novel's back cover, so I was hoping this novel was going to be a funny and light read and couldn't wait to dig into it!

Unfortunately, the only chapter I found truly funny was the first chapter about "Doug the Heinous Dragon." After that chapter, the novel lost me. In "Preston the Project Mishap," the narrator describes going to a club and mingling among "Frito-laced, bodussy-type smog." I still don't know what that means...

Nevertheless, I chose to give this novel a fair chance and kept reading until the end. I Wish I Never Met You is definitely entertaining, but I felt that the narrator was difficult to relate to, even for readers who have had their own experiences dating a barrage of yucky men.
I didn't find this book humorous at all. I actually found it disturbing on many levels, especially when we get to a story near the end where the narrator is so fed up with a man that she forces him to drink her urine and pees into his mouth. That chapter was so gross and offensive that I ended up putting this novel down for a week!

I can expect to read "golden shower" stories like these in Letters to Penthouse and Penthouse Unleashed, but I was totally unprepared for it in I Wish I Never Met You and it spoiled the book for me even more. It seems as though Wheatley's editor may have agreed with me on this, which Wheatley mentions in her acknowledgments at the end of the book.

Dreamworld's Recommendation

We can't love all the books we read. That said, I DO NOT recommend I Wish I Never Met You to anyone. I wish I had never read this book!

Here are other book titles by Denise N. Wheatley, featured on Amazon.com:

When It's All Said and Done
Wards of the Women
The Road to Bliss
Love at the Icicle Café
A Naughty Jolly Christmas
My Unconditional Valentine (The Holiday Chronicles)

Have you read this novel, and if so, what did you think?

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