Book Review: Wallbanger by Alice Clayton

Title: Wallbanger

Author: Alice Clayton

Genre: New Adult Contemporary Romance

Published: November 25th 2012 by Omnific Publishing
Source: Bought
Buy It: Amazon

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…

In her third novel, Alice Clayton returns to dish her trademark mix of silly and steamy. Banter, barbs, and strutting pussycats, plus the sexiest apple pie ever made, are dunked in a hot tub and set against the gorgeous San Francisco skyline in this hot and hilarious tale of exasperation at first sight.

DISCLAIMER: This is one of my reviews wherein I type away, not caring whether I sound totally idiotic or not. I wrote this review right after reading the book because of all the things it made me feel. I really need to write this quick before my ideas go bye-bye. So forgive me, if this review sounds a bit loopy.

I'll be honest. I was pretty excited to read this book because of the title. Not... that I'm looking... for anything *coughs* specific. I was just *coughs* curious.

*Clears throat* Wow, my throat's itchy.

Well anyway, the title definitely got me curious. I didn't even bother reading the whole blurb - I thought I got a pretty good grasp of the story with the title (and cover) alone. But then Caroline started talking about her missing O a lot (and I mean a lot) so I decided to read the blurb. I saw that a lot of reviewers on Goodreads are complaining that the book's plotless. I disagree though. There's is a plot: it's simply about finding Caroline's lost O. Yes, just that. The book basically revolves around Caroline's quest to recovering her long lost O and all her frustrations in between (heh).

The thing that I really really liked about the book was the humor. It's hilarious how the protagonist thought and talked about all her sexual frustrations. I kept laughing and highlighting her lines because I thought the author did a great job at creating such a witty and funny character. I especially liked scenes involving her cat, Clive. Caroline and her cat... regardless of the author's intention in including a pet cat (you'll see), I think it made the story twice as enjoyable. I was already loving the story when Simon Parker entered....

And I fell in love for the nth time this year. and I loved it even more. He's just sexy and oozing with confidence - and not in a cocky way too! I loved that he didn't have this bad boy edge to him. He was just... cool. I guess. I can't really think of a proper description. I think I've read one too many books with the same kind of leading man that I feel a bit desensitized. Simon - even his name's uncommon for a hot guy -  definitely brought my interest back. HA! Boy does he like bringing stuff back (heh).

It's typical among romances to use the insta love effect but in this book, I was surprised that they weren't all over each other immediately. I was bracing myself for the insta love cliches i.e. wrong first impressions, getting to know each other, they do it, then BAM! I love you so much my heart's going to explode. *rolls eyes* There were wrong first impressions, they did get to know each other but they didn't do it (at least not so soon... eh, I'll get to that) hence they didn't fall in love so quickly. I was so happy with the way things were going. All their banters and verbal/pastry foreplay (yes, I said pastry) were so humorous and sweet at the same time. I loved the build up and I was patiently waiting for them to finally get together.

But then my patience ran out.

The thing is, inasmuch as I appreciated all that, their love story took forever to progress that I was slowly becoming as frustrated as Caroline. At one point I felt sorry for her too and wished they just get down to business already. To make matters worse, Caroline was starting to bug me. I don't know if it was her lack of O that's turning her neurotic or the slow pace was ticking me of. All the talk about her O still missing and her Lower Caroline begging for her Wallbanger and her Brain, Heart and Backbone throwing rocks at Nerves for ruining things....... MAN. Stop! Just stop. There was an overload of repetitive nicknames for body parts and people that it wasn't even cute anymore. Plus, she was over thinking the same things over and over again. I get that you're nervous but please. You're running out of pages....

Oh and did I mention they only did it at around 80% (according to my Kindle app) of the book? Yep. With the title, the cover and the blurb you'd think this is one of those books. Not to worry though because quite a lot of pages were spent with Caroline and Simon locked up in Caroline's apartment doing you know what for 24 hours. It came a little late though (heh) but what the heck! Caroline finally got what she wanted and I was just happy for her. Like, really. I wasn't even thinking about how I felt anymore. I fell out of love for the book by then and I just wanted to get it over with.

Now this didn't really affect my enjoyment, but I found out this was a fanfic of Twilight. I wouldn't have found out if someone hadn't told me. I didn't see any similarities between the two books so I didn't really mind. For one thing, Caroline wasn't like Bella... except for the sexually frustrated part but she wasn't weak or plain or timid (was she? Or was she shy? Uh..) whatever. And Simon wasn't deep and broken like Edward. The fact that it was a fanfic didn't bother me. The fact that it read like a fanfic did. There were chapters wherein the transition would be awkward because it'll suddenly change from a first person POV to a third person POV when they'd text each other. There was even this one chapter where you'd only be reading their thoughts, switching from one character to the next. It was fun reading their texts and their thoughts because they were just so funny and the banters continued there, but it kind of made the transition sloppy.

So here it is: 3 stars. I was really torn when I was going to rate it because for the most part I kept LOL-ing and gushing and grinning like a dork but the climax disappointed me (heh) greatly. It would've worked out though, slow pace and all, if only Caroline toned down the crazy. There was just too much going on in her head even when they were already doing it. *sigh*  But ya'll should still check it out if you're up for it. Don't let my review keep you from meeting Simon. ;)

My Rating

(Refer to rating system)

About the author

Alice Clayton

Alice Clayton is a novelist with an unholy love for her KitchenAid mixer. Making her home in St Louis, she enjoys gardening but not weeding, baking but not cleaning up afterwards, and is trying desperately to get her long time boyfriend to make her an honest woman. Hi sweetie!!

After working for years in the cosmetics industry as a makeup artist, esthetician, and national educator for a major cosmetics company, Alice picked up a pen (read laptop) for the first time at 33 to begin a new career, writer. Combining her love of storytelling with a sense of silly, she was shocked and awed to be nominated for a Goodreads Author award in 2010 for her debut novels, The Redhead Series.

Alice has penned three novels, The Unidentified Redhead,The Redhead Revealed, and coming soon in November 2012, Wallbanger. She thinks you should purchase them immediately. She’s not kidding, not even a little bit. Everyone needs some comedic erotica in their lives. She is hard at work on the third book in The Redhead Series, set to release in Spring of 2013, continuing the saucy and sexual escapades of everyone’s favorite couple, Jack and Grace.

Additionally, Alice loves spending time with her besties on Not Your Mother's Podcast, make sure you check them out at notyourmotherspodcast.com or over on iTunes. 3 women rushing towards their forties still acting like teenagers. A saucy little mix of sex, love, relationships, pop cultural, celebrity gossip and All Things Jake Ryan.

Alice enjoys pickles, Bloody Mary’s, 8 hours of sleep, and a good pounding.

Finally Alice would also like all her readers and listeners to help her convince Mt. Alice that the only other thing that would make her truly happy is finally bringing home a Bernese Mountain Dog. She is totally serious. And done talking about herself in the third person…

CONTACT INFORMATION

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