Shacking Up: The Smart Girl's Guide To Living In Sin Without Getting Burned Book

It's probably not fair to review the book when I didn't bother finishing it but I'm going to do it anyway.

For the most part this book was incredibly helpful. The chapter on legal issue with shacking up and ways to protect yourself and your stuff was EXCELLENT. I also loved the way it address both the joys and difficulties of living together. There is a great chapter on "learning how to argue" that every couple should read. So for the most part, this book is filled with information that has real life applications and will give everyone a head start at understanding exactly what they are in for when they move in together. I enjoyed many things about this book.

My real problem with it is that the authors wrote the book as though it were an article in Cosmo. An annoying you-go-girl style that makes me feel like punching a wall. Much like Cosmo they make a lot of assumptions about the race, culture and family dynamics of the readers of the book. They assume you are upwardly mobile and from a religious family who will object to your shacking up. Also I was bored by the opening chapters which seemed to be designed for someone who hasn't decided if they want to shack up yet. It had Cosmo-esque multiple choice quizzes and other silly things to decide if you were ready which I felt were unnecessary as I wouldn't have picked up the book if I wasn't planning to shack up.

The reason I never finished it was because the sister-girl style finally drove me too batty to continue. The clincher was a paragraph in the argument section that sent me over the edge. They suggested ways to make yourself happy was to buy a specific brand of lip balm. It had nothing to do with the surrounding information and was a blatant advertisement for an expensive lip product. I couldn't keep reading after that.

So in the end, the information is mostly useful but it's presented in the most frustrating, gimmick-y way. I'd still probably recommend the book to anyone thinking about moving in together but only because I've not seen much else out there that covers the subject.