DNF at 26% because I wanted to fly to Australia to slap the incredibly unlikable main character. This was no Eleanor Oliphant. ( )

The Publisher Says: An eccentric woman who is great with numbers—but not so great with people—realizes it’s up to her to pull a community together in this charming, big-hearted debut perfect for fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and The Rosie Project.

Germaine Johnson doesn’t need friends. She has her work and her Sudoku puzzles. Until, that is, an incident at her insurance company leaves her jobless—and it turns out that there are very few openings these days for senior mathematicians with zero people skills.

Soon enough though, Germaine manages to secure a position at City Hall answering calls on the Senior Citizens Helpline. But it turns out that the mayor has something else in mind for Germaine: a secret project involving the troublemakers at the senior citizens center and their feud with the neighboring golf club—which happens to be run by the dashing yet disgraced national Sudoku champion, Don Thomas, a celebrity of the highest order to Germaine.

Don and the mayor want the senior center closed down and at first, Germaine is dedicated to helping them out—it makes sense mathematically, after all. But when Germaine actually gets to know the group of elderly rebels at the senior center, they open her eyes to a life outside of boxes and numbers and for the first time ever, Germaine realizes she may have miscalculated.

Filled with an eccentric, totally unique, and (occasionally) cranky cast of characters you can’t help but love, The Helpline is a feel-good page-turner that will make you reexamine what it means to lead a happy life—and is bound to capture your heart along the way.

I SNAGGED THIS FROM MY LOCAL LITTLE FREE LIBRARY! (then gave it back)

My Review: As a value proposition, this read was outstanding...Little Free Library finds don't get better than this. And the weekend I found it, I also found out it's got a follow-up coming out early in May 2023! The characters and the story were exactly, precisely delineated with my sense of humor in mind. The writing's got that wry, amused-that-you're-amused edge that I appreciate and approve of. If you need something to scratch [[Loretta Nyhan]] or [[Christopher Brookmyre]] itch, try this one on for size. Bonus: Australian setting, meaning the atmospherics are enough different from US stories to add another edge. (PS I disagree about the Oliphant book's comparability, since I found it unpleasant; [Dear Mrs. Bird] is much closer to the vibe you'll get, I think.) ( )

It takes place in Australia. Some terminology and conventions were new/strange to me. Germaine is a socially inept young woman, but kind of clueless to that fact. Who goes to Sudoku conventions? She breaks things down into mathematical probabilities. When the book includes graphs and illustrations of her take on things, its pretty hilarious. When she is fired from her job at an insurance firm (not her fault, she insists!), she falls into a job answering phones for the Senior Helpline. In true Germaine fashion, she is singularly unhelpful! But the mayor gives her a "special project," which involves getting the senior center closed down. She's doing a great job at that until she starts to care about the seniors involved. ( )

This Aussie version of Eleanor Oliphant is Perfectly Fine is much more fun. Germaine (hahaha name), a math and Sodoku savant, gets fired by her boss after many years as an insurance company actuary, when knowledge of their secret after-hours canoodling is revealed. With the grudging assistance of a nasty cousin (her vow-renewal ceremony is hilarious), she gets a job on a senior citizen help line in a small city hall office and ambitiously pursues a promotion from the mayor, who, in cahoots with a handsome Sodoku champion and former idol of Germaine's, tasks Germaine with closing down the popular senior center. The plot is somewhat predictable, but Germaine is a great character and we are lucky that the author is generous with the inner thoughts and workings of her unique persona. Kind of a hoot! ( )

Not as good as other books with same issues ( )