Have I Got a Guy for You Edited by Alix Strauss

"Have I Got a Guy for You: True Stories of Well-Meaning Mismatches" Chronicles over 25 true tales of mothers who tried to set their daughters up with men and failed horribly. All assumed they knew what was best for their daughters and tried to help them achieve romantic success, only to get to truly epic levels of Fail.

Most of the stories are truly amusing, such as the story of a woman who tried to set her daughter from L.A. up with the then-producer of Live with Regis and Kathi Lee's Michael Gelman, seemingly uncaring of the fact that he lived in New York and was Jewish. She sent him e-mail after e-mail trying to persuade him that her daughter was exactly the woman he was looking for (because Regis was twitting Michael Gelman over his unmarried state), and copying the e-mails to her daughter, allowing the actual texts of the e-mails to be used in the story!

And then there's the woman who set her daughter up with a hypochondriac, and the Korean mother who set her daughter up with a wealthy man from the home country... who tried to buy her affection with expensive gifts... to her mother!

What makes most of these stories amusing is the fact that many of the women eventually found love on their own, without the help of their mothers. But the last one in the book is the story of a woman set up with a date by her mother. The date was arrogant, pushy and rude. But the daughter did eventually find love with him... three years later, after he'd matured and grown up a great deal.

Which just goes to show that true love is like a fairy tale... one in which you have to kiss (or at least date) an awful lot of frogs before you find a prince... and your mom seems to be running the frog farm!

I really enjoyed this book. Thankfully, my mom never performed this particular service for me, for which I am extremely grateful, and I am also glad that my mother isn't as... ahem, extreme... as the mother who e-mailed Michael Gelman endlessly on her daughter's behalf. I suspect other daughters will feel the same way about their own mothers. Whether you view this book as a series of cautionary tales or amusing stories about the lengths some mothers will go to in helping their daughters find a nice man, you will definitely find it amusing and, at times, horrifying, but the type of horrifying that invokes a belly laugh and thankfulness that this isn't happening to you.

This is an amusing read you are sure to enjoy.