Wallbanger, by Alice Clayton

Title: Wallbanger
Author: Alice Clayton
Publisher: Omnific Publishing
Publication date: November 2012
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Source: Bought

Description: Caroline Reynolds has a fantastic new apartment in San Francisco, a KitchenAid mixer, and no O (and we’re not talking Oprah here, folks). She has a flourishing design career, an office overlooking the bay, a killer zucchini bread recipe, and no O. She has Clive (the best cat ever), great friends, a great rack, and no O.

Adding insult to O-less, since her move, she has an oversexed neighbor with the loudest late-night wallbanging she’s ever heard. Each moan, spank, and–was that a meow?–punctuates the fact that not only is she losing sleep, she still has, yep, you guessed it, no O.

Enter Simon Parker. (No, really, Simon, please enter.) When the wallbanging threatens to literally bounce her out of bed, Caroline, clad in sexual frustration and a pink baby-doll nightie, confronts her heard-but-never-seen neighbor. Their late-night hallway encounter has, well, mixed results. Ahem. With walls this thin, the tension’s gonna be thick…

My thoughts: I bought this book after seeing it reviewed on a couple of my favourite sites. They loved it, the blurb sounded fun, and it was just before finals, so I needed something to cheer me up. It certainly did that. Let me just say, I'm glad my roommate wasn't around, because I was giggling out loud so many times reading this story. I think I tweeted a lot about it too while I read - it really is one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. But more than just a funny story, Alice Clayton has given us great characters and a believable plot.

Caroline has just moved in to a new apartment but is horrified to be woken up the first night by banging from her neighbour through the wall, and the awkward accompanying noises of sex. She does the normal response and pulls a pillow over her head, but after three nights of hearing her neighbour having sex, with a different woman each time, something snaps, and we get the hallway encounter mentioned above. At a housewarming soon after, they discover mutual friends, and form a truce. Truce turns to friendship, and gradually friendship leads to something more.

This isn't just a story about Simon and Caroline, though. Simon & his two best friends fall into a firm friendship group with Carolina and her friends. It was very funny seeing Simon and Caroline working together to try to match-make their friends. Another character I enjoyed seeing was Caroline's boss. All the characters seem fully fledged, as though they are real people I might meet on the street, or (more likely) in bar.

Although the story is told from Caroline's point of view, there are occasional interludes where we see texts between characters, which gave an interesting look at how Simon was feeling, and his thoughts on Caroline.

I can't talk enough about how funny this book was. I really was laughing out loud as I read. A rich contemporary romance, Alice Clayton's 'Wallbanger' is a hilarious frienemys-to-lovers story. If you need a story to cheer you up, I would point you to this one.

I will give this book 9 stars.
~Ailsa