Love, Sex and Tesco's Finest Cava
Film fanatic Rob Smith is thirty-eight, newly single and on the wrong side of two marriages.
Rob’s looking to get back into dating but quickly discovers that in the ten years he’s been married the rules of the game have changed. After a couple of disastrous blind dates, Rob strikes it lucky when he meets the supremely confident Jenny on URdate.com.
As Rob blunders his way through their early dates, he begins to discover there’s a price to pay for the upturn in his sexual fortunes.
Rob has to deal with an anarchic house, three teenage boys, his own sexual inadequacies and the nagging feeling in the back of his mind that, just maybe, Jenny is not all that she seems.
If all that’s not enough his best mate Steve’s insatiable desire to be crowned ‘Halton and District over 35s Five-a-side Champions’ is adding to the pressure.
Will love, sex and Tesco’s finest cava be enough to see him through?
I chose this book because of the title. I figured it was going to make me laugh. I wasn’t wrong there. I chortled my way through this book which follows the fortunes of Rob as he goes through a divorce (his second!) and contemplates his future. He decides to use the internet to meet someone and gets to know Jen. Jen is also divorced with 3 teenage boys and although it’s not initially apparent – she has issues.
I enjoyed reading some ‘chick lit’ that’s actually told from the male point of view. Rob’s interpretation of situations is so different from Jen’s. I found myself nodding and laughing as he tries to understand the female psyche and the male/female relationship frustrations that I’m sure a lot of us can relate to. There are some funny and also touching moments as he finally meets, and begins to get to know, Jen’s boys. The scene at Pizza Hut is hilarious.
It’s a bit ‘blokey’ and slightly crude in a few places, no romance here. It’s certainly not a work of literary genius. It’s simply written and I was surprised to see a few grammatical errors and typos along the way.
Verdict: A down to earth, humourous read that’s definitely one for the holiday pile.
Reviewed by Lesley
