A review by booksavvy
Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto by Eric Luper

3.0

Seth has just been dumped. Not only that, but while being dumped (at Applebees!), he spies his father having lunch with someone other than his mother. To top it all off, these two incidents cause him to be fired from his fourth, yes, fourth job this year. As his life seems to be collapsing around him, he copes by starts an anonymous podcast called “The Love Manifesto” to try to help find out "what love is, why love is, and why we're stupid enough to keep going back for more." As Seth and his best friend Dimitri run around town trying to discover the identity of his father’s lunch date, Seth has to figure out a way to keep his detective work (and his feelings) from his father while they practice for an important father-son golf tournament. To make matters even worse, his mother has been sharing Seth’s plight with the world via her radio show “Gayle’s Romantic Rendezvous” and slowly, the anonymity of his podcast is being compromised. Will Seth ever finish reading his list of “156 Reasons I Love my Ex” or will his podcasting days end as soon as they began?

Filled with pop culture references and a playlist of each song included in Seth’s podcast, this book will resonate with anyone who has ever been on the losing end of a break-up and wondered why we even bother with love in the first place. In the end, Seth learns that sometimes falling in love means doing things you never thought you’d do, including eating the worst chicken salad sandwich in the history of the world.