Jenni from the book

Well, well, well, look who it is. How long has it been? Over a year now. And when I completed 3 books on my summer holiday last year, I never imagined that it would take a lockdown triggered by a global health pandemic to squeeze the final 2 books in. Nevertheless, we're back again, another 5 books down (as is tradition) and I'm sharing my thoughts on them (warning; there are spoilers ahead).

This book was a little confusing because the blurb on the back and the synopsis on goodreads are different and given that I order books in bulk and then slowly get around to reading them, I didn't know that it was the same book until I started it. The version on goodreads explained that Liv Jenkins was on a mission to complete her daring, adventurous bucket list before turning 30 and then dies suddenly. Two years later her friends meet up and decide to complete it for her, with shocking secrets being spilled along the way and the final item on the list changing their lives forever. The version on the back of the book describes Liv as the glue that holds a friendship group of 6 together and when she dies, the remaining 5 are left flailing without her. As they attempt (and fail) to live their lives to the fullest and struggle with secrets along the way, they have to ask themselves when it's time to unfreeze the version of reality that Liv left behind and get on with the business of actually living. So as you can see, they paint a slightly different picture. In truth, the book was somewhere inbetween. It begins when Liv has already died, 18 months after the fact, on what would have been her 29th birthday. The five friends she met at university and left behind when she died, all meet to toast her - Mia and Anna (her two best friends), Fraser (her death-did-they-part boyfriend) and Melody and Norm (the power couple of the group). While doing so, it's revealed that Norm has found a bucket list left behind by her, and the five of them agree to split the tasks and complete them in her honour. But living life to the full isn't a tick box exercise, especially when Mia now has a baby with a dead-beat dad, Fraser is burdened by guilt and unable to be alone, Anna is struggling to come to terms with what's happened and what she knows about it, and Melody and Norm are, behind closed doors, dealing with not being quite as golden as everyone thinks they are. You also learn quite early on that Mia and Fraser have been in love with each other ever since they met at uni but something (be it a mix-up over moussaka or him then getting together with her best friend) always seems to get in the way of them being together. So over the course of the year that the book takes place in, you see the two of them struggling to know what to do about their feelings for each other, especially when paired with the guilt they feel for Liv and the fact that they can't ask her opinion or permission. I would say that overall, I enjoyed the book and to sum it up in one word, the story is about healing. It's about the way that life, death, ageing and events affect us and the course in which our life goes, and how we subsequently deal with that. I really enjoyed the way the book was written, from both Mia and Fraser's perspectives but not in a rigid pattern (it wasn't like one alternate chapter each, it was all mixed in). I also really did like the love story between Mia and Fraser but my problem with it was that it cheapened Liv's life and her role in the story; it almost made her into just another obstacle for the two of them to overcome. I think this was worsened by the fact we never get any chapters with her alive and so, as a reader, you don't really get to know who Liv was - you only get to see the hole she left behind. I did like the character development from the other five though and I thought that a lot of the anecdotes about unexpected motherhood, childhood sweethearts and growing up were very poignant and well-written. The blurb on goodreads was right about one thing though; the last item on Liv's list was life-changing (and something I predicted) but more than creating shock factor, it just made me sad. Sad for the life that Liv didn't have and actually could have done, if she had lived to see how life would've played out regardless. But I suppose that was the point of the whole book; you must live the life that you want now, as you never know when your tomorrow's will run out.

I wanted to like this book, I really did. And it was one of those where it wasn't so glaringly bad that I obviously hated it, but it was one that I didn't look forward to reading (and it became a chore to do so) and I was really thankful when I reached the end (after about 3 months of battling with it). The blurb describes the book as being about Noah, a slightly eccentric man who dreams of settling down and finding the right one. Someone he's sure is the wrong one is Angel; when he meets her by chance, he knows they're totally incompatible (not least because she doesn't 'do' relationships). And yet he can't stop thinking about her. So fuelled by his friend's theory that all it takes for 2 people to fall in love is 13 dates, he sets off on a mission to win her over. And I can't quite put my finger on why this book fell short in my eyes, because it pretty much did what it said on the tin. There wasn't a massive storyline to speak of; the book was essentially just about the two of them slowly getting together. Its only saving grace was Noah's character and the situations he found himself in. The dialogue was cleverly written, his inner monologue hilarious and a lot of the observations spot on. His character very much reminded me of Don Tillman from The Rosie Project (a book me and my mum loved). But that's pretty much where my love for the book ended. The love story between him and Angel didn't massively feel like one that you wanted to root for, the "massive twist" (spoiler alert: she has a heart disease that means she could die at any moment) comes too early in the book and the eleventh hour felt like it lacked any kind of dilemma or suspense. The whole book was just very middle-ish. And it was only around halfway through when you learn of Angel's condition and the book ceases to be about funny dating anecdotes and instead becomes one giant philosophical conundrum about life and death. Don't get me wrong, I love a good exploring-what-it-means-to-really-live book. But this felt more like endlessly-talking-about-what-it-means-to-live book; all that happens is the same conversation goes back and forwards between Noah and Angel until you eventually run out of pages. I gave this book 3 stars on goodreads, purely because I liked Noah as a character. Without him, it would've been a solid 1 star.

Some of my favourite books of all time (reviewed in earlier posts) are by Joanna Bolouri so I immediately added the rest of her repertoire to my must-read list. I Followed The Rules is actually an earlier one of hers about a journalist slash single mum whose magazine column has lost the intrigue it once held. Faced with breathing new life back into it (and potentially into her love/sex life), Cat agrees to follow the rules of a dating book (written by a mystery misogynist) and write about the results. Rules like 'don't talk too much about yourself', 'never make the first move' and 'don't have sex with him too soon'. Even though every single one of them goes against her better judgement, Cat follows the rules and writes about the results, which are unexpected, hilarious and entirely predictable. First of all, Joanna Bolouri's writing style is incredible. Especially if you want a good holiday read, her crude one-liners, witty comments and ability to make a hilariously unbelievable situation feel real will have you laughing out loud. I also really liked Cat as a character and was rooting for her from the beginning. The strange thing about this book is that I didn't know who to root for her with. It's a genre-trope in chick-flick books that you know who the main character will end up with pretty early on and when I was halfway through the book and still saw no signs of a main romantic lead, I started to worry I'd be disappointed. But look a little closer and you'll see that the love interest was introduced pretty early on (although you don't meet him until later) - the author of the rule book is her happily ever after. There is a twist involved which I managed to guess a couple of chapters early, but it was a really great storyline and I loved the way that the book developed. This author is amazing at not trying too hard at her books; there's no neat, happy-ever-after for every single character, with one getting married, another having a baby and another winning the lottery. The happy endings in Joanna Bolouri's books are more about first dates than declarations of true love. It's what gives her stories an air of authenticity and it's part of the reason I like them so much. I Followed The Rules is basically the book version of The Ugly Truth (the film) and if you liked that film then you will love this book.

The second I read the description of this book on goodreads, I immediately added it to my list and was excited to read it. The Kiss Quotient is a book about a high-functioning woman with Aspergers syndrome, who despite her academic and financial success, is still left puzzled by matters of the heart (and of the bedroom). Stella decides to take matters into her own hands and instead of suffering through any more painfully awkward sexual encounters, she hires herself a male escort to teach her the ways. Enter Michael. Gorgeous, underachieving, financially challenged and deeper than Stella may have originally bargained for, the two enter into an agreement to give them both what they need. Obviously things don't remain as transactional as that, and what ensues is essentially a gender-reversed version of Pretty Woman. While Stella unlocks the key to the sexual being she didn't know she was locking away, she also battles with the labels she's been stuck with and what they mean about who she is. At the same time, Michael finds himself juggling his family life, his dark secrets about his runaway dad, his ambitions that have been put on hold, and his growing feelings for a woman he believes he'll never be good enough for. I loved that this book was written from both characters perspectives and the writing style was hugely different in each one to the point that it could have been written by two authors. Sex scenes are always tricky to get right in books; sometimes the author plays it too safe and it comes across as cringey, but some make it too vulgar and it makes it tacky. It's also hard to get the frequency right. I know that fifty shades was a global phenomenon and blah blah blah but there's a reason that its main audience was bored housewives; because the sex in it is actually not that explicit, not that well written and basically just repeats every 4 pages. In The Kiss Quotient, the sex scenes were carefully sprinkled with a mix of fully descriptive scenes and hints at sex that'd just been had. Although the sex was a key theme of the book, the main aspect that really came through was the complexity of the two characters, the demons they battled and how easy two people can fit together when you find the right one. I thought Stella's autism was written very well and it was actually quite educational, seeing how her quirks affected her decision making. It was also equal parts frustrating and delicious to see how Stella and Michael's ideas on what the other one felt and thought about them, contrasted so highly with the truth. It just goes to show that in life, you really do have to go after what (and who) you want.

This book felt like it would be a big fat bit of me. Fate brings together two perfect strangers, Laurie and Jack, on a December night, they lock eyes through a bus window, fall in love at first sight and then the bus drives away and separates them forever. But "forever" only lasts until Laurie's best friend Sarah introduces her to her new boyfriend (who she says is her future husband)... Jack. The book's tag line reads 'Two people. Ten chances. One unforgettable love story.' So naturally, I was expecting a One day style love story where they were brought together 10 times over the 10 years that the book spans, and it's about whether or not they would get together for good. But actually, Sarah and Jack are together for the first 3 years of the story, and then Laurie is with someone after that (who she marries), and then once they're both unattached again, it's seemingly only themselves who get in their own way. I won't be too harsh because I did enjoy the book - mildly. I wasn't exactly rushing to read more to find out what happened, but I wasn't desperate to get to the end either. It was pleasant, for want of a better word. Nothing too exciting, nothing too boring. I liked the fact that it was written over 10 years with random days selected and I like the dual perspective writing style (as you should know by now). Other than that, it felt like the author was trying to make mundane events into life-changing plot twists. Career changes, parents getting ill, people having children - it all felt overly dramatised and like it was written from a very privileged perspective. The "agonising problems" screamed of someone who's never actually experienced any real problems of their own. But the most important part of the book, the part that the whole plot hinges on, was the part missing as far as I was concerned; the connection between Laurie and Jack. The book managed to capture the element of forbidden fruit just fine (wanting something you can't have) but other than the fact that it was a best-friend-boyfriend situation, I didn't get a single reason why they were drawn to each other. And as a result, I didn't root for them at all. I didn't care if they got together in the end. And actually, I preferred Jack with Sarah and Laurie with her husband Oscar. And the author didn't do nearly enough to convince me that both parties weren't happier and better off with their other significant others.