Feb 5, 2007 3 min read

Right about this time of year, you’re going to find all sorts of “helpful” suggestions for men for Valentine’s Day. Here’s a sample: Get her roses. No, they’re trite. Get her orchids. No, carnations.

Burn “your” song on a CD. No, that’s cheap. Hire a band to play the song.

Buy her racy, lacy lingerie. Or leather. No, wait, buy her cotton underwear.

Carnations? A band? Huh?

Obviously, V-Day is a romantic minefield just waiting to blow up a relationship. In the new book “Mr. Wrong”, edited by Harriet Brown, you’ll see that some writers were glad when their relationships went up in flames. Some of them even lit the match.

Is it boredom, inertia, or a willingness to play with danger? Why do we see that a man is oh-so-wrong for us, yet we traipse happily into a relationship with him, hoping that he’ll morph into Mr. Right? In this heartbreakingly fun anthology, you’ll see that you aren’t the only woman to choose a man who is bad, bad news.

He’s charming, roguish, and has that glint in his eye that makes you swoon. He also cheats on you with a bevy of bimbos. In “My First Husband’s Girlfriend and Me”, you’ll read how a series of conversations with The Other Woman made a wife realize that the husband she clung to was choking her chance at true happiness.

Sometimes, Mr. Wrong is really Mr. Right-at-the-Wrong-Time. In “Senior Prom”, two very shy teenagers attend an embarrassingly quiet dance.

And when a lovely romance starts off well and ends in a shocking confession, we steadfastly refuse to believe that Mr. Wrong was wrong at all. In “Good-bye to the Gaiety”, a woman married a man for all the right reasons. Years later, she mourns him and what could have been.

But before you start believing that this book is filled with maudlin stories, read “I’m Still Waiting”. You’ll see that Prince Charming might really exist. He might be right in the bed next to you.

In my never-ending quest for a Sty-Mate, I’ve kissed my share of pigs so “Mr. Wrong” was a book I definitely enjoyed. I think you will, too, because we’ve all had our share of Guys Gone Bad. That’s what makes this book so darn fun.

“Whew!” you’ll say. “Man, I never dated a guy like that. Or that. Or that. Thank heavens!”

In “Mr. Wrong”, more than twenty well-known authors write with passion, truth, and (sometimes) humor about stalkers, deplorably bad dates, terrible relationships, what-was-I-thinking linkings, men who were deeply loved and lost, and men who were so laughably bad that you almost can’t believe they really existed.

Unless you’ve only ever dated one man in your life, you’ll find yourself in this book. You’ll also laugh and you’ll cry (because sometimes, as they say, if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry). So pick up “Mr. Wrong” because – right now, when it seems like the entire world is filled with hearts, lace and candy – it’s the right kind of book to read.