Wallbanger (The Cocktail Series Book 1)

I can't believe I DNF this book for two reasons.Number 1- I NEVER EVER DNF a book! It is unheard of. No matter how "bad" a book is I still try and push through!Number 2 - out of 165,024 ratings on goodreads this book got a 4 star rating. Also every person I have spoken to who has read this book thought it was HILARIOUS. So when I saw this book for free on @bookbud I had to get it right!?Now I am no way a prude, from looking at the cover alone I knew this book would be steamy, hell even from the opening sentence I knew what to expect! 20% into this book I thought okay when does the story actually start? Caroline is constantly woken up by her neighbour and his overnight guests, even to a stage where a picture falls off the wall and hits her on the head. I didn't find it funny. Caroline talks to her "area" more than she would talk to humans.I didn't get the humour, the characters and the lack of storyline really annoyed me. I really really wanted to like this book.Sorry but this book gets a massive thumbs down from me.

I was very disappointed by this book, which I bought after seeing the title on a list of the best romance novels of the year. I have read a great many romances in my time, written in a wide variety of styles, but this one was trite, repetitive, and poorly written. Caroline sounds and acts like a bratty teenage girl, and the way she talks about herself is baffling- obviously we are all familiar with conflicting emotions and impulses, but do we REALLY need to have narrated internal arguments between anthropomorphised entities including Brain, Backbone, Heart, Nerves, and the worst of all, her sex drive- Lower Caroline (at times cringingly abbreviated to LC)? It takes EL James' ridiculous Inner Goddess/subconscious gimmick to a whole new, painful place. I tend to give these sorts of novels a bit of a pass on plot/sentence structure/whatever if the sex scenes are at least convincing, but they weren't. They were just incredibly wordy and lacking in anything approaching real feeling. A shame.

What a brillant book this was. I loved it - it was funny, witty and interesting, romantic and a real love story. It kept me up all the hours god sent.I read it on the tiolet , in the bath, in the car not while driving of course!!!!! I read it in about 3 days i could not put it down.The characters were so likeable and fun and the way the story bulit up was so beautiful. It made me laugh and it made me go gooey it was a really enjoyable book.I think the way Caroline changed Wallbanger with out him even knowing it really was such a nice story line. The Spain trip was written to perfection and it was not rushed. I loved the end as well with the food and raunchy stuff in the kitchen. It was probably one of my favourite reads this year because it had me hooked. No doubt about 5 stars I just wanted the story to have a follow up book.

This is the first in Alice Clayton’s The Cocktail Series and it’s something that I’ve been looking forward to reading for quite a while. I started this as part of the #SexMeUpReadathon that the girls over at Gosling Girls Book Tours were running between the 21st and 25th of July.The story is all about main character Caroline Reynolds. Caroline has just moved into her new apartment in San Francisco with her cat Clive. She’s got a great job, this brand new apartment, she’s not had successful sex for a while and what is NOT the perfect remedy? The sex god next door.I was really looking forward to reading this hoping that I would like it and I can’t lie I was a teensy bit disappointed!At first I liked Caroline’s character. She was funny and interesting and I liked the way that she engaged with you as a reader through the almost interactive narrative. I found some of her quirky thoughts and names for her “hoohah” funny and I thought that her character had a little extra pep, similar to the main character in a chick-lit novel.The story was predictable insofar as the next door neighbour – so aptly nicknamed “Wallbanger” – was indeed a wallbanger. I thought that this was a fun introduction to the other main character in the story – Simon Parker. I enjoyed that they had a bit of a love/hate relationship going and when it turned out that it was a small world after all their relationship started to take on a new meaning. I liked the progression from friends to more although I expected it to be faster and with more chemistry than what I felt there was.I read through the story quite quickly but felt more like I was just trying to finish it more than I was hooked. I think it was a more heavy mix of silliness than steaminess and that wasn’t what I was hoping for so it let the book down a bit for me. The writing was good throughout and the story had enough of a mix of predictability and the unknown to keep you interested.