Strictly Love

by Julia Williams

[Leah]

Strictly Love is Julia Williams’ second novel and folllows Emily, Katie, Mark and Rob. Emily is a lawyer who wated to devote her life to good causes so how come she’s defending zedlebrities (Julia’s word, not mine)? Katie wants to be the perfect wife – trouble is her husband, Charlie, is away a lot. Mark has just split up with his wife and is wondering if he’ll ever find love again and Rob, happy-go-lucky Rob is hiding a terrible tragedy. A dance class brings them together and they re-invent themselves – they can be anybody they like. Trouble is it may come back to bite them in the bum…

It took me about 5 days to read Strictly Love because I just couldn’t find the time to sit down and really get into it. However for the past two days I’ve managed to sit down and really get into it and I found that I really enjoyed it.

Dancing seems to be a popular topic among chick lit books at the moment – Lucy Dillon’s debut The Ballroom Class for instance. It’s a great topic to read about especially if you enjoy Strictly Come Dancing or shows like that.

Coming in at under 400 pages you might think we won’t have enough time to really get to know each character but we learn enough about them to care about them all. I liked Emily but found her a bit irritating when she went completely off on one with Mark because he lied to her when she herself lied to him. I think she redeemed herself in the end though, and I was happy she finally made up her mind regarding her job! I enjoyed reading about Mark and the unfortunate incident he found himself in. (More about that later) but it was Katie and Rob who made the story for me. I loved how easily they got on with each other and how they could relate with each other even though they started on a rocky foundation (Rob called Katie thunder thighs!). However reading about them dancing together was just brilliant.

I felt for Katie because she was trying so hard to be the perfect wife to Charlie and he seemed completely oblivious. His secret was not what I expected, when he blurted it out I was very surprised. I also really felt for Rob and couldn’t help wondering what on Earth he was hiding that caused him so much pain. I was suitably shocked when I found out!

Along with all of the four having personal problems there’s a storyline running about Mark. One of his zedlebrity clients, Jasmine (who seems to resemble Jade Goody) makes a shocking allegation and he ends up trying to defend himself and not lose his dentists’ job. Trouble is, Jasmine’s lawyer is Emily so that caused a lot of mayhem between the two of them. I knew how the storyline would end but I still enjoyed it.

One final twist in the story is an incident involving one of Mark’s daughters. This I did not see coming! It definitely had me reading on and on, I’ll tell you.

I really enjoyed Strictly Love. The third-person narrative is well written and it was very easy to get lost in the storyline once I was able to really sit down to get into it. It’s well worth a read particularly if you love dancing, as I said.

Rating: 5/5