Two films and a miniseries later, I’m just not fucking impressed.
For those of you that ain’t hip, I normally hate reviewing mainstream books, because they tend to get a lot of attention for being on the dick of PenguinRandomSchuster, but for The Best Man: Unfinished Business, I’ll make an exception since I’m tired of hack ass Hollywood “celebrities” getting book deals and fucking up. The author of this piece of chitterling shit is Malcolm Lee, who wrote and directed the films The Best Man, The Best Man Holiday and the recent miniseries The Best Man: The Final Chapters. Riding shotgun as co-writer is Jayne Allen, someone I’ve never heard of or read any of their works before this monstrosity.
A hit movie 30 fucking years ago does not equate to excellent author, as this novel proves. Malcolm Lee, who had no literary experience as a novelist, got a cushy PenguinRandomSchuster deal to dole out three unnecessary novels in his titular franchise because New Line Cinema and NBC Peacock won’t give him any more money to make these films.
The entire franchise centers around novelist Harper Stewart, who previously wrote a novel entitled Unfinished Business that aired out his crew’s dirty laundry from college. His crew consists of:
Lance Sullivan: The college superstar turned NFL sensation that’s the group’s hoe hopping Jesus Freak.
Mia Sullivan: Lance’s wife and the crew’s proverbial good girl Lance didn’t deserve.
Jordan Armstrong: Ambitious go getter that’s working her way up in media corporate America despite neglecting her secret desire to be with Harper.
Quentin Spivey: The playboy of the group that was Julian’s college roommate and wound up in a long term relationship with his ex-girlfriend Shelby.
Shelby Taylor: Julian’s girlfriend turned Quentin’s side piece of ass turned wife and mother to Quentin’s kid (which he don’t find out about until they get married and the kid is 10).
Julian Murchinson: The nerd of the group that is a lawyer, walks away to start a prep school. Initially he can’t keep secrets until later and grows ever resentful of being the bitch boy of his peer unit. He marries a stripper, Candice, who stripped at Lance’s bachelor party.
In said novel Harper aired a lot of personal things about his friends, but the grits hit the pan when he revealed he didn’t fuck Jordan but fucked Lance’s then girlfriend Mia, who decided to give Harper some to get back at Lance for his chronic infidelity.
The Best Man: Unfinished Business picks up right as The Best Man: The Final Chapters leaves off, which is with Harper and Robyn divorcing, with the latter moving to Africa with their daughter Mia. Lance has now remarried and is settling in married life. Quentin and Shelby are taking it easy after Quentin’s heart attack, Julian and Candice are cool, enjoying each other and Julian’s newfound confidence and shadeful attitude with his friends after becoming a viral MMA star. Jordan has moved to Los Angeles to avoid Harper, since their almost about to fuck moments over the course of their friendship have finally gotten to her.
Harper, of course, is fucking anything he can out of both drawers legs (ala Lance in The Best Man: The Final Chapters) dealing with the loss of his wife and daughter in their divorce.
Where this novel goes fucking wrong is that it’s 98% about Robyn, Harper, and Jordan. Lance, Quentin, Shelby, Julian, and Candice are literally cameo blips in the novel, with nothing much to do than give advice either over the phone or over the card table in spurts. This alone pissed me off, because fan service will tell janky ass Malcolm Lee that everybody wanted more Quentin and Shelby. It took the fucking miniseries for anybody to like her ass, and once we did we wanted Quentin and Shelby like we wanted Dwayne and Whitley, not stank ass Robyn and Harper/Harper and Jordan combo.
I also don’t like how they did Julian. He’s angry as hell in this and comes off more condescending than his usual forthright self as he’s been in all the films. Julian’s more like a backstabbing cousin waiting on Harper to walk by so he can stab him – he’s just that unlikeable. Candice ain’t nowhere doing nothing. Lance is equally insufferable since I can’t figure out whether or not he likes his new wife or did he just get another woman because he got tired of being a hoe and needed a new Mia replacement. That’s what I got from him in the brief moments he speaks in this piece of shit book.
Harper is still the same selfish motherfucker he’s been in all the movies and that is just who he is at this point, but I don’t care about flaky ass Robyn running to Ghana after lusting after mushroom man in The Best Man: The Final Chapters and going broke running a restaurant with bad business sense and fucking some married dude that literally is only in the book so she can get some. She’s one dimensional and filler.
The only thing in the novel that was worth a single solitary handclap and a kick to Malcolm Lee’s nuts in congratulations was Harper finally beating the brakes off Jordan (which is in Chapter Eighteen if you just need to get to the good part). After two films and a miniseries, it was about damn time since the characters are now fifty years old and when we started they were fresh from college. Jordan deserved that dick and baby did she get it for all the times she wanted it and couldn’t get it and all the times she was ready to give it up and didn’t. Fans of the series can now breathe a sigh of relief on that. And that’s where the good part of the novel stops.
Soon as Harper and Jordan decides to give it a go, Mia (Harper’s kid, not Lance’s wife) comes calling and Harper goes running off to Ghana because she says she and her mother are “in trouble”. Jordan goes extra and all of a sudden doesn’t understand he has to go because his daughter is halfway around the world and it gets scream queen old quickly. Harper, after arriving and finding out Mia lied but Robyn is in financial trouble, stays to try and have closure with her. That results in them having a very forced and unnecessary goodbye fuck that Lee couldn’t have just left the fuck out. It was ridiculous considering how they ended in the miniseries, and its’ all types of 1980s fucked up Dynasty shit that the book ends with Robyn getting pregnant by Harper off that one night stand that didn’t have shit on Chapter Eighteen when he dick downed Jordan.
Don’t buy this novel. Don’t wait on the subsequent sequels. Malcolm Lee should be slut shamed from literature, never allowed to even so much self publish on the worst print on demand service in history. If the entire book was just Chapter Eighteen it would have been worth a read but his ass couldn’t do that right.
It’s so fucking funny, for a hack ass director/screenwriter writing about a hack ass novelist, I would have expected in 30 years of this property he would have at least learned the process of being a good novelist since that’s the story he’s been telling. But nope, he had to prove he’s just a shittier writer than his titular character.
Just read Chapter Eighteen and be done with this bullshit.
