My Imaginary Ex

I've been wanting, searching, praying for this book for months. The feeling was quite close to yearning. I actually became desperate enough to actually tweet the authoress to beg her to send me a copy - if she still had one - because I couldn't find one for myself anywhere. And I had even reached MoA in Manila in my search for it! That's a record. The farthest I'd ever gone to for the sake of a book was Shang in Ortigas, about two years ago, when someone said this book called Twilight was enough to drive one insane.

But enough. We are in the era of the Fifty Shades, which, just to add a bit more feminine vanity into this post, I am currently reading, too.

My Imaginary Ex was published in 2009, written by the same genius who came up with No Strings Attached and the forever epic That Kind of Guy. [Her name is Mina V. Esguerra, I am proud to say I have communicated with her over Twitter - fangirl moment! - and yes, that is her signature up there on the first page of my book.]

The back cover synopsis reads,

When Zack asks Jasmine to pretend to be his ex-girlfriend, she gamely agrees, thinking it would be fun. A few years later, she still has to keep convincing people that they were never together! Then one day, she finds out he's getting married - to someone she'd just met once! All of a sudden, things aren't so clear-cut anymore. Can Jasmine sort out her feelings (sometimes, she can't even tell real from pretend when it comes to her and Zack) before it's too late?

In case it isn't quite obvious yet, I am a huge fan of Ms Mina. [I once Tweeted her, feeling FC, and asked if she happened to be at Friuli Maginhawa while I was there, too, but that's for another post. Possibly one entitled, Rabid Fangirls and Why I'm One of Them.] I keep raving about this to other book lovers who don't quite appreciate the thrill of paperback romance: there is something about this authoress that seems very, very precious. Yes, you can go through her stories in just a few hours. Yes, her heroines are very normal people in very normal settings. But that's precisely why she's so effective. She has an ability to weave imaginary people into potential real-life situations, to make you think that somewhere, out there, someone is going through the same things, the same way the heroine in your PhP150.00 guilty pleasure is.

Somehow, I always feel extremely happy to know other people out there are happy. Even if they're strangers. Even if we'll never meet. It fills me like warm, fuzzy, bunny fur, and coffee froth and marshmallows in crystal bowls. I feel very comforted, and I can never pinpoint why.

This isn't even a review anymore, is it? ::D I'm glad about that, too. Thank you to Ms Mina for sending me my copy of My Imaginary Ex - I have an autographed book, YES!!! ::D