Title: Wallbanger (The Cocktail #1)

Author: Alice Clayton

Publisher: Omnific Publishing 2012

Genre: Romance

Pages: 384

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges:

Caroline Reynolds has a fantastic new apartment in San Francisco, a Kitchen Aid mixer to die for, 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, she also has an oversexed neighbor with the loudest late-night wallbanging she’s ever heard. Every 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. 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. Because with walls this thin, the tension’s gonna be thick. A delicious mix of silly and steamy, this is an irresistible tale of exasperation at first sight.

I’ve been looking for a good choice for our book club’s Dirty Book Month. I do not think this is my choice. My first issue is that there is too much talk about sex and not enough actual sex. Our main characters don’t actually have sex until the last few chapters of the book. I definitely needed more in my spicy romance. Instead of actual sex, we get a lot of ridiculous sex talk full of silly comments and nicknames. I was very over the silly talk. And then we get to the main characters. I really enjoyed Simon, but Caroline was very naive and grating at times. I think I need to stay away from spicy romances that center around characters in their early 20s. We’ll see how it goes, but this one is going into the nope category.

The Cocktail

• #1 Wallbanger

• #2 Rusty Nailed

• #3 Screwdrivered

• #4 Mai Tai’d Up

Next up on the TBR pile: