Love... from Both Sides (Love...)

by Nick Spalding

[Leah]

When I heard about Nick Spalding’s novel Love From Both Sides, I was intrigued. Nick self-published the novel last year and it was then picked up by a traditional publisher in Hodder & Stoughton. Which is fabulous news for him, and I love hearing about self-published authors who then get a book deal with one of the big publishers. It speaks volumes about their work, and I had noticed Nick’s book before then, I just didn’t have any time at all for it. Which I now massively regret, actually, because I adore Love From Both Sides. It was absolutely amazing. This is going to sound really dumb but Jamie and Laura’s story sounded like an actual, real life love story, it was just so true, I could scarcely believe it was fiction!

Love From Both Sides is pretty much a love story, but an actual warts-and-all love story, not a magical everything-is-rosy love story. The horrors Jamie and Laura go through before they meet is ridiculous. That’s the only way to describe some of the people they date: It’s RIDICULOUS. It’s like Jamie and Laura are the only two sane people in a world full of morons. Seriously. When Laura and Jamie eventually meet, in true Laura and Jamie fashion, by literally crashing into each other, leaving Laura with a sore knee and Jamie with a bad back, it’s fate. FATE! Because, make no mistake about it, Jamie and Laura are utterly perfect for each other. You won’t meet a better suited couple. But, like I said, it isn’t all flowers and poetry and magic, though it is a bit, and as it turns out, love is a lot harder than you’d expect.

Firstly, I want to say that this book is genuinely hilarious. There are sooooooooo many books that proclaim to be witty and funny and hilarious, but they’re not, they rarely are. It’s quite hard to project sarcasm in writing form, I feel. But, oh my God, Spalding does it!! Spalding is literally a comedy genius. True story, I was having lunch at work and I was reading as I was eating and I was on break with Dave, who I work with and he kept asking me why I was laughing at my book. I kept making these silly snorty/laugh-y noises and in the end I had to put the book down because I couldn’t eat, laugh and read at the same time. There are so many scenes in the book that made me snort, in particular, Laura’s run-in with a Burger King till, after a date with a man who loves his bike goes from bad to worse, when he makes her ride his bike and she ends up in Burger King. Even thinking about it now makes me laugh out loud. The book is full of dating mishaps, and the most memorable bit of the book by a country mile, is what happens after Jamie risks making fajitas with some almost-out-of-date chicken. It is comedy gold, and you’ll never look a pedal pin in the same way again.

I loved the book. You really do have to read Love From Both Sides, because it’s ace. I even love the way it’s written – blog posts from Jamie, and diary entries for Laura, as they’re both writers, or, rather, they like to write which I suppose is how I should phrase it. The book really blew me away, it made me laugh, it made me snort, it made me a bit wary of dating, I’ll admit. As soon as I finish this review, I will be heading to Amazon to get myself the Kindle versions of Love and Sleepless Nights and Love Under Different Skies, the other two Jamie and Laura books. They are the most real fictional characters I have ever read. They’re proper people, with proper worries, and even when they’re not doing what I want them to, I still loved them. It was an amazing book, seriously. I loved it. I can’t speak more highly about it. You just must read it and see the comic genius amazingness for yourself. You’ll thank me.