How to Get a (Love) Life

by Rosie Blake

[Leah]

Not a lot of books come with as much hype as Rosie Blake’s debut novel did. Ever since it was announced, I was expecting the kind of read I would fall immediately in love with, a novel to rival any Sophie Kinsella book. The bright yellow cover is eye-catching, and it draws you in and I was really, really excited to receive my copy to review. And it PAINS me to type this (it really, really does; this review will be one big pain-fest) but I really didn’t love it as much as I wanted to, or expected to. For all the hype, for all the love it already seemed to have before it was even released, it just fell a little flat. Maybe that’s what happens when a book is so hyped about?

How To Get A (Love) Life tells you all you need to know about it by its title. It’s titular character Nicola’s life is a bit dull, it’s routine, she eats her lunch at set times and she doesn’t date. Ever. So when her work colleague and friend Caroline double dares her no returns to get herself a date for Valentine’s Day, Nicola sees her opportunity to get herself more of a life than she currently has, a real, proper life that sees her go out in the evenings instead of staying in with her Sky box. But as it turns out trying to find a date is bloody hard, will Nicola manage it in time?

To me, there seemed to definitive timeline to the novel. There was no sense any time had passed between chapters, and it’s just never really mentioned in the novel, so that was my first issue with the novel. I felt it probably would have worked better if the 10 dates that Nicola goes on throughout the novel was split into sections, because I didn’t count 10 dates. In fact there’s only three that stick in my mind – the beat boxer/rapper/MCer, the penny-pincher who didn’t share his sweets and the canoe/kayak date. The whole novel just seemed quite under-developed. It probbaly wasn’t helped that Nicola was quite stuck-up; I don’t mean that in a bad way, clearly it worked for her to have set routines for every minute of every day, but I felt a bit of spontaneoity would have done wonders for the book. Nicola was too strait-laced, if there’s such a thing.

I really wanted to love How To Get A (Love) Life. I love following Rosie on Twitter and I think everything Novelicious have done with their new imprint is AMAZING and I will continue to read every single one of their books, and it does really hurt me to not love a book. I was sort of just reading it, and reading it, and just waiting to have that “OMG” moment that made me love it, and it never came. If you’re writing a novel about getting a love life, then there needs to be a hero to root for and although I knew where the book was going, there was no spark or chemistry until it was way too late. I just wanted Nicola to maybe step out of herself for a little bit, because I felt she needed it. Her brother Mark was a fantastic character, so unlike his sister and I loved that he loved bats! What a weird thing to love, but that made him so unique! I really wanted this book to blow me away and be the funniest thing I would read this year, but it wasn’t, and that sucks for me. I’m so disappointed, mostly in myself, for not loving it more.