A good date can be exhilarating: a shared joke, an improbable spark, long moments of gazing fondly into each other’s eyes. Not so for the dating disasters featured in this collection of laugh-out-loud actual tweets about the most terrible evenings imaginable. From seriously unwelcome confessions, to dousing dates in wine, to bringing them back to creepy apartments to meet favorite stuffed animals, here are the funniest and most alarming reports from dating’s front lines.

Along the way, author Rhodri Marsden offers tips on how to identify and avoid the worst of the bad daters, including married men, blatant liars, deluded optimists, and more. This harrowing collection of real nightmare dates will amuse anyone who’s suffered through one of cupid’s off nights.

I went on a date with a Peruvian guy who said to me during our tapas: “You eat like windmill.”

The date went well until he mentioned his name is not really Steven, nor was he 27, nor single.