The Real Thing

February 2, 2015
In this charming compilation of essays, Washington Post weddings reporter McCarthy examines the many paths to finding, or failing to find, true love. Using her own experiences in the dating minefield, as well as those of the hundreds of couples she’s interviewed, McCarthy divides her work into five general topics: dating, commitment, breakups, weddings, and “making it last.” She does not romanticize love, but instead eyes it through a realistic lens, in essays with such titles as “Screw Meeting Cute,” “Good on Paper (But Not Good Enough For You),” and “Love Is Not All You Need.” At the same time, she balances her cautions with reminders that some people do manage to find their forever partners, in essays such as “The Good Stuff,” “Let’s Talk About Sex,” and “What Makes It Last.” McCarthy, unmarried when she began the column, credits those she met along the way with helping her find her own soulmate and husband, Aaron. This book will not only charm those in decades-old marriages, but also inspire those afraid love will never arrive for them. A comforting, realistic, and endearing portrait of modern relationships. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.

January 1, 2015
A Washington Post journalist investigates the lives of real-life couples to understand what goes into making relationships work.McCarthy became the weddings beat reporter for her newspaper in 2009-ironically, on the same day she broke up with her then-boyfriend. In the months and years that followed, she spoke with dozens of couples from all walks of life seeking insight on "this thing called love." The author delivers a compilation of the best of these interviews, which she interweaves with words of wisdom drawn from relationship experts, therapists, researchers and her own experience. Like Nikki, the happily married African-American technology manager, and Daniel, her much shorter Jewish husband, singles should "never say never" to what appears different from what they expected or wanted. Openness to others, as well as to different methods of locating a potential partner, is a must. Once in a relationship, people need to steer clear of illusions that a life lived in tandem is all about "champagne and sweet nothings." Good relationships require tolerance, compromise, and an understanding that a spouse cannot and should not be "our everything." And while breaking up may be hard to do, those who go through it need to experience it fully and completely because nothing, including denial, "will allow [them] to sidestep the stages of grief." When two people decide to formalize their relationship with a wedding, the biggest challenge will be to sift through the "million ways to make the occasion magical" while keeping their cools. Making that marriage last is the final frontier. But as McCarthy's story of Bob and Henry, a couple that stayed together for 62 years, suggests, little things, like saying, "please, thank you and excuse me," are what ultimately make the difference. Straight-talking, but hardly groundbreaking, dating advice for adults of all ages.

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February 15, 2015

McCarthy delivers a welcome combination of cynicism and poignancy in this account, which reads with the ease and accessibility of a self-help book. Readers can dip easily into sections on topics such as dating, commitment, break ups, weddings, and lasting love. Each of these segments includes McCarthy's framing of the event with wry observations from her own romantic life before launching into short anecdotes about relationships drawn from hundreds of interviews. The author profiles couples from a range of ages and experiences and highlights how complex and messy even the most seemingly normal relationships can be. Still, this book caters primarily to a fairly privileged demographic and ultimately reinforces many stereotypes about marriage that feel outdated. For all of her playful allusions to Sex and the City and Bridget Jones's Diary, McCarthy reinforces a paradigm in which "weddings are a testament to hope and love and an enduring belief in the world's goodness." VERDICT For readers more interested in wedding veils than what those veils metaphorically conceal, this book is a fun read full of wonderful stories and driven by a belief in the "promise of those tiny words: I do."--Emily Bowles, Building for Kids Children Museum, Appleton, WI

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2015
In one day, McCarthy, then 30, broke up with her boyfriend of 18 months and was hired full-time to cover the wedding beat for the Washington Post. Tears and self-pity aside, and knowing that the cream-puff prose she would have to put out would actually become family treasures, she threw herself into the work, hoping that if love happened for others, it could happen for her as well. There's some solace in knowing life isn't all mud puddles and bird shit, no? This little book details the years that followed as she met, interviewed, and wrote about lovers of all ages and types and in various stages of love, and its sections cover the processes of Dating, Commitment, Breakups, Weddings, and, of course, Making It Last. This rich collection of stories charms and edifies, is filled with quotes from couples as well as experts in the field, and serves as not just stories to sigh over but lessons to apply. As for McCarthy, she's happily working on making it last herself. Upbeat and sweet.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)