Frog Kissing for Beginners

Johanna Lenné is an active, successful lawyer in her late thirties who lives in Zurich and generally enjoys life: Hiking with friends, singing in a choir, taking long bike rides, traveling, and work. Life could be quite perfect if there wasn't this one black hole which she falls or is pushed into, every now and then: Jo is single.

Her best friend Klara's wedding is, naturally, another occasion for a free fall into the black hole, and Jo bets with an equally single colleague that they would find partners, within a year. In the ensuing months, she works her way through the methods of modern partner search - studiously and unsuccessfully: Speed flirting, dating websites, clubs, visits at concerts or museums, old-fashioned set-ups by friends. Her dating spree leads her to a Porsche driver working his way through the Kama Sutra, a likably huggable Saint Bernard with a not so likable attachment on the upper end of the leach, a testosterone evaporating gym junkie, many guys too shy to say hi, or a couple therapist who doesn't believe in twosomeness - and more.

When she increasingly questions whether there really is such a thing as eternal love or whether she has just fallen prey to a well-advertised myth, too many Jane Austen novels and rom coms, or exaggerated expectations, she meets Dr Mark Kinsey, a man who knows what he wants: Johanna.

But is he really what she wants? Her better half? Her soulmate?

The time has come for Johanna to decide what really matters in her life.

Hanna Clarin is a lawyer from Berlin who now lives and works in Zurich. For years, she traveled with the caravan of love-seeking singles through the wonderful world of dating. She had fun dates and bad ones, interesting and boring ones, repeat ones and never again ones. Her main revelation, though, was that no partner can bring her a happiness which she cannot not find in herself. Reason enough to write a novel for women who have outgrown the common chick flick patterns.