Not Meeting Mr Right

Written by Anita Heiss

Narrated by Tuuli Narkle

‘I am deadly, desirable and delicious!’ This is Alice's mantra as she hilariously negotiates her way through the rocky terrain of singledom.

Alice Aigner is successful, independent and a confirmed serial dater – but at her ten-year school reunion she has a sudden change of heart. Bored rigid by her married, mortgaged and motherly former classmates, Alice decides to prove that a woman can have it all: a man, marriage, career, kids and a mind of her own. She sets herself a goal: meet the perfect man and marry him before her thirtieth birthday, just under two years away. Together with her best friends Dannie, Liza and Peta, Alice draws up a ten-point plan. Then, with a little help from her family and friends, she sets out to find Mr Right.

Unfortunately for Alice, it's not quite as easy as she imagines … Who could not fall in love with our Koori heroine as she dates (among others): Renan, whose career goal is to be the world's best moonwalker and male hula dancer; Tufu the commitment-phobic Samoan football player; scary Simon the one-night stand; and Paul - Mr Dreamboat, but perhaps too good to be true. All the while, Alice skilfully avoids dating Cliff, son of her mum's friend and confirmed bachelor who isn't likely to settle down with a woman anytime soon.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781761109911

Anita Heiss

Dr Anita Heiss is an internationally published, award-winning author of 23 books; non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial women’s fiction and children’s novels. She is a proud member of the Wiradyuri Nation of central New South Wales, an Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and the GO Foundation, and Professor of Communications at the University of Queensland. Anita is also the Publisher at Large of Bundyi, an imprint of Simon & Schuster cultivating First Nations talent, and a board member of the National Justice Project and Circa Contemporary Circus. As an artist in residence at La Boite Theatre, she adapted her novel Tiddas for the stage. It premiered at the 2022 Brisbane Festival and was produced by Belvoir St for the Sydney Festival in 2024. Her novel, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray, about the Great Flood of Gundagai, won the 2022 NSW Premier’s Indigenous Writer’s Prize and was shortlisted for the 2021 ARA Historical Novel Prize and the 2022 ABIA Awards. Anita’s first children’s picture book is Bidhi Galing (Big Rain), also about the Great Flood of Gundagai. Anita enjoys running, eating chocolate and being a creative disruptor.

Reviews for Not Meeting Mr Right

[Aimee Drews · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had the book originally and decided it was quicker to listen to audiobook to save space on my bookshelf - it was ok but not a raving review

[pamelad_570511 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Alice is the head of the history department at a Catholic Girls' school. After attending a school reunion where all her classmates are married with children and can talk of nothing else, she makes a plan to marry before she's thirty, in two year's time. The book is about her search for her future husband. There's a lot of tedious drinking, shopping and waxing, interspersed with some interesting insights into life as a middle-class Aboriginal woman. Being Aboriginal certainly adds a degree of difficulty to the man search, and there are some amusingly scathing caricatures of hypocritical white people who want to be Kooris, and establishment bigots. The book is disjointed and sometimes didactic, unfortunately.