Rubbish Boyfriends by Jessie Jones

Present day – Dayna is about to give birth in the maternity ward. Through the book, Dayna explains her love history and how she got to this point, about to give labour. All of her past boyfriends have been a bit, well rubbish. One of these men is the baby’s father, the only question is: who?

I found reading this a bit of a chore – none of the characters are partucluarly interesting. A book can succeed or fail on the basis of its main character and in this case, Dayna is spoilt, whiny, arrogant, selfish and unlikeable. The way in which she supposedly has this magic effect on men, managing to reform their characters, is unexplicable, managing to curb Simon’s womanising ways for example, given her personality.

For the majority of the book, Dayna moans. I didn’t find the narrative partuclary exciting and ended up skip reading sections frequently. The ending, which is the readon the reader is forced to learn about Dayna’s history, sseems abmigious. Nowhere is it explained how Simon got to be the father. Did they have a one night stand or rekindle the relationship in secret? What about Dayna’s relationship with Christian? A friend commented that Dayna, having seen Kirsty conceive using a turkey baster, may have enlisted Simon’s help to have a baby, but why Simon? It doesn’t really make sense. The last line when Simon comments on the baby looking “curly” and Dayna stating that SImon is the only boyfriend who has straight hair is confusing. Is it just a flippant remark or is she trying to imply that Simon is not the father? After muddling through the story, to be presented with this ending is frustrating.

Rubbish Boyfriends, rubbish book (original, I know). And lastly: Chris Martin and Coldplay. WHY?! 1 star.

Love Rules by Freya North

Alice and Thea are best friends but their ideas of love are very different. Thea believes in a fairytale-type of love, and fully believes in romance, waiting for the right man to come along. Alice, on the other hand, is cynical - passion is a chemical emotion, not an emotion, and she dates man after man, with each relationship crashing and burning. Eventually, she decides to take charge of her love life and proposes to Mark, her long time friend, hoping for a secure and stable relationship. Over the course of the next few years, Alice and Thea find their ideas of love seriously challenged.

North's style of writing is confusing - she doesn't organise her narrative into chapters, instead opting for headings, the tendency to change tenses and speaker is all too frequent and is messy. There is a section when North writes from her own perspective, asking questions about the main characters, which resembles a bad TV cliffhanger, or a conversation in a discussion group. The front covers of Adam don't really serve much purpose, although I enjoyed them more than the actual story itself and its characters.

Alice is maddeningly selfish and spiteful, her best friend Thea fares a little better, but presents herself as insipid and dull. The male characters don't really do or add much, although Saul and his feelings for Thea after their split did tug at the heartstrings a little, but on the whole, I couldn't really give a damn about these characters.

I couldn't really take to the plot either, in particular, I found it awful to read about Alice and her attempts to conduct and justify her affair, and it is incomprehensible as to why we are supposed to forgive Saul for visiting prostitutes when he proclaims to love Thea. Thea's reaction to hearing the truth is to try to sexually harass her male clients. Makes sense.

Not a great read on the whole - I didn't enjoy the story or the characters. 1 star.

It's A Kind Of Magic by Carole Matthews

Leo is a selfish and inconsiderate boyfriend, and after making a drunken show of himself at Emma’s birthday dinner, she decides that enough is enough and breaks up with him. On the same night, Leo meets a beautiful stranger called Isabel, and his life changes forever…

To be honest, the general premise of the plotline didn’t work for me. I’m not usually a fan of stories with magic, but I decided to give it a go, but I just couldn’t get into it. I didn’t like the way that the other characters felt sorry for Leo – he is an awful character – and it seems like everyone is against Emma (a nice person, although she can verge on irritating at times), which I thought was unjustified. The idea of Isabel being with Leo is bizarre and the story really stretches the reader’s belief. Reading this, I found the story dull and uninteresting – nothing and no-one was really likeable, and I ended up giving up halfway. 1 star.