Book Review: Funny You Should Ask
I started reading Funny You Should Ask with high hopes. The troupe was right up my alley – a young journalist gets the break of a lifetime when she’s hired to write a profile on a movie star. The weekend they spend together proves to be life-changing, but their paths and careers take them in opposite directions. Ten years later, she finds herself back in Los Angeles and facing the task of writing a follow-up interview and the opportunity to find out what that weekend meant to him.
An every woman journalist and an international movie star? Sign me up.
Funny You Should Ask alternates between then and now and is told from the point of view of Chani Horotiwz. Then she was a twenty-something journalist with an MFA watching all of her classmates land book deals while she churned out puff pieces. She was assigned the task of profiling movie star Gabe Parker, her celebrity crush and the latest James Bond, and found herself pulled into his whirlwind for an unforgettable weekend that included a movie premiere, going to a gay club with his best friend, fellow actor Ollie, and a house party. The profile she ultimately wrote changed her life and skyrocketed her career while Gabe’s own career soared – until it crashed.
Now, Chani is back in Los Angeles after spending several years in New York. She is fresh off a brutal divorce and trying to put the pieces back together while her career continues to boom. Gabe’s PR team reaches out with a request for her to write a follow-up piece in an attempt to help clean up Gabe’s tarnished image and she reluctantly agrees in an effort to find out if that weekend meant anything to him. We learn their paths have crossed a few times over the years, and that a lot has happened both between them and to them.
Funny You Should Ask had so much potential. Gabe is a changed man and he wants Chani to know it. It’s clear he still has feelings for her and he convinces her to go with him to his Montana hometown as part of the profile where she meets his family and learns about the project he’s working on with Ollie. There is so much build up, so much tension, and then… It falls flat. The ending is anti-climatic and Chani goes from likable to borderline annoying while Gabe himself remains steadfast and arguably undeserving of some of the treatment he receives.
And we really needed more Ollie who proves to steal the spotlight whenever he appears on the page.
I wouldn’t say skip Funny You Should Ask altogether. I have a few friends who loved the book. I would go into it with low expectations, however, and decide for yourself whether or not the story falls flat or wraps up with the sweetness of a Hallmark movie.
