Living La Vida Loca

by Belinda Jones

[Leah]

Carmen and Beth are best friends who are sick of the way their life has been lately. Carmen has only just broken free from a bad relationship and Beth is realising that her dream of becoming a famous dancer is ebbing away slowly. Salvation comes for the pair in the form of a reality TV show that will allow them to travel the world learning how to dance: the tango in Argentina, the Paso Doble in Spain and the Salsa in Cuba. Soon the girls are tango-ing in Buenos Aires, learning to dance with matadors in Seville and salsa-ing in Havana and having a ball of a time. They’re still missing one vital ingredient: love. But are the girls ready to set their hearts free again?

I’m a huge fan of Belinda Jones’s work and have read most of her books (The California Club & Cafe Tropicana were both fabulous) and I loved her last release Out Of The Blue, too so I was hugely disappointed to learn Belinda wasn’t having a book released in 2009. I perked up when it was announced that Belinda had joined a new publishers and that there would definitely be a book out in 2010 called Living La Vida Loca. Imagine my delight when I received an early copy from the publishers to read. I decided to leave it a couple of months as (when I read it) it wasn’t out until June but it kept shouting at me to read it so I eventually gave in.

The one thing I can guarantee with a book by Belinda Jones is the exotic locations in which she sets her books. California, Las Vegas, Italy, Greece all feature in previous books and in Living La Vida Loca we have Argentina, Cuba and Spain. The main reason Belinda is so good at making us love the countries her books are set in is because she’s so passionate about travel herself and that really comes off the pages as you read about all of these magical destinations. Usually her books only feature one country so to pull off three stunning countries is quite something and I really enjoyed travelling around Spain and South America with Beth and Carmen.

The book begins by introducing us to Beth and Carmen, both aged 8, as they get ready to watch Come Dancing, a show they both adore but for different reasons. Beth wants to be a dancer but Carmen prefers the costumes the dancers wear. Twenty years later it transpires that Beth and Carmen are now best friends (they met during Dirty Dancing: The Musical) and while Carmen is a costume designer, Beth is finding hard to come by dancing work. All of Beth’s prayers seem to be answered when she and Carmen come across an ad looking for people wanting to learn how to dance the tango, the paso doble and the salsa all in their countries of origin (Argentina, Spain & Cuba respectively) and be filmed for a reality show to boot. Beth jumps at the chance but is quite downhearted when she learns that it’s only for non-dancers but it doesn’t deter her for long and soon she and Carmen are making her a body suit to bulk her up and make her seem as if she really is a non-dancer.

Beth then goes to the audition and manages to fool the reality TV people into thinking she’s some sort of clutz and they agree she can star in the show – and bring Carmen along. Soon the girls are whisked off to Buenos Aires to learn the tango before sweeping into Seville to learn the Paso Doble and finally, to Havana to learn the salsa. It’s not all plain sailing though as Carmen is harbouring a broken heart and Beth is harbouring the fact she’s, you know, actually a dancer. Things inevitably come to a head just before they leave Argentina for Spain but will Beth and Carmen actaully make it to Seville to learn the paso doble?

Inevitably, I had huge (and I mean huge) expectations for Living La Vida Loca so I was pleased that the book seemed to grab me early on. I loved learning how Carmen and Beth had met and I loved the banter between the two of them. The scene where they bulk Beth up in a bid to fool the reality show producers was hilarious in fact. Then of course came the fantastic locations as the girls managed to hoodwink the producers and soon we were in Buenos Aires, Seville and Havana. I absolutely loved learning about all three dances. I’m not very dance-y but even I found the explanations of the dances easy to follow (not that I would attempt them myself, obviously). The history of each dance is so rich and Belinda Jones kept it easy to digest as we learned about each dance.

As well as managing to bring to life so many exotic locations, I also found the characters incredibly interesting. Carmen, our narrator, is, just to put it plainly, lovely. There is seriously no other description to aptly describe Carmen. She’s warm and funny and I really liked her. She has some skeletons in her closet, namely her ex Lee who, from what we read, really wasn’t pleasant. She managed to fight back though and for that I loved her. I also really loved Beth, Carmen’s best friend. It was so sad to see her so down at the beginning of the book as she was pushed out of the dancing community in favour of younger dancers and I just couldn’t help but laugh when she came up with the hare-brained scheme to disguise herself as a novice dancer. She pulled it off, I must say! Beth and Carmen were really the main characters in the book but the reality show crew were also ever-present and they were an OK bunch.

Belinda Jones’s writing is as good as ever (although I got irritated with the amount of time Beth or Carmen ‘hoot’ed and ‘toot’ed) and I really did enjoy the book. I suppose the reason I’m not jumping off the walls is because of my expectations of the book. I expected a lot and it’s inevitable that I was going to feel disappointed (it’s not the first book this year I’m over-hyping and it won’t be the last!). I fear I over-hyped the book so much that no amount of fab locations or fab writing was going to make it worth just how much I had hyped it up in my imagination. It’s mildly unfortunate for me as I so wanted this to be one of my favourite reads of this year. I did love it, but just not as much as her previous efforts. I also found the ending relatively luke-warm. It was all kind of abrupt and I think it needed a few more chapters. Yes, it all seemed to come full circle but I wasn’t totally satisfied; I wanted romance!

Overall Living La Vida Loca is another great read from Belinda Jones. She’s certainly one of my favourite travel writers as she easily manages to make countries like Argentina and Cuba sound so exotic. In fact reading about Cuba makes me want to go there right now and see if it’s like it was described in the book! I was slightly disappointed but I still expect the book to be a huge hit as really, no one quite does what Belinda Jones does: giving us a fun read with great destinations to escape to. I’ll certainly be buying myself a finished copy! Oh – and for all you Ricky Martin fans, look out for a nod to him in the book!