Thursday 29 December 2016

Book Review - Mad Love by Nick Spalding

Amazon UK
Title: Mad Love
Author: Nick Spalding
Format reviewed: Ebook
Source: Netgalley
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: 6th December 2016
Rating: 5 Stars


Can two people who have never met make a marriage work? Popular dating site Sociality thinks so, and is marrying London lad Adam to California girl Jessica to prove it.

What better way to show that your ‘love algorithms’ work than to put two complete strangers together in an expensive publicity stunt? But, as livewire Jess and lazybones Adam quickly discover, just because a computer says you’re the perfect match, it doesn’t make it so!

Two million Sociality subscribers and the media are following the happy couple’s progress, and they have to make a go of it or they’ll lose everything, look like idiots, and destroy Sociality’s reputation. But can the mismatched pair, who seem to be constantly at each other’s throats, put their differences aside and work their way into each other’s hearts?

Nick Spalding, bestselling author of Fat Chance and Bricking It, will make you cry with laughter at this story of marital warfare—complete with sinking boats, badly aimed flatulence, well aimed tennis balls and some very suggestive pastry.

I recall laughing out loud pretty much hysterically at Nick Spalding's previous book Bricking It, so when I spotted Mad Love, I figured I had to give it a go, to see if that was a one off or not. Yet again there was at least one scene and a one-liner else where that had me laughing pretty much uncontrollably. 

It seems as though this is an author that can continually hit my funny bone,  and as a result I thoroughly enjoyed this whole book, which has a rather zany concept, that does seem to work. 

Take two complete strangers, one publicity stunt for an online dating site Sociality, and pray that everything works out for the best! That is pretty much what Cassie at Sociality has done, in running a competition where the winners as matched by her "algorithms" will get married on Valentines Day, get a honeymoon, a cash prize plus an apartment to live in for a year. 

So who are the "lucky" couple that feature in this stunt, well that would be Adam and Jess, who within the two intro chapters one for each of them, you see how on face value badly matched they really appear to be.  The first two chapters don't just serve as an introduction to Adam and Jess, but also give valuable insights into the personalities, and each of them has a laugh out loud instance, that early on in the book too, to give a feeling of starting as you mean to go on. 

Thinking back the majority of chapters have one highly hilarious event happen in them, a lot of them involving the various publicity stunts that Sociality keep arranging to show how happily married their couple are. 

Amongst the events, there is a memorable speedboat trip in an Italian Lake, a French Cookery lesson where one of the bakes turns into not quite what was planned, an exhibition tennis match, which shows just how good each of their aim is when they want, a party that had me almost in stitches, and that is before I mention Bad Bad Baa Sheep! 

The pacing of the book is quick, the writing it witty but also fairly descriptive as I could always see properly what was happening, and just loved the dynamics between Adam and Jess. The ultimate questions that book makes you ponder are would you be willing to take part in the ultimate blind date and end up married to a stranger? What sort of people would even enter that kind of competition? And most importantly do seemingly opposites attract, and can a computer really predict human chemistry?

I loved Mad Love so much, I am now contemplating buying the majority of Nick Spalding's back catalogue to see just how many times he can get me to laugh out loud in public!

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Lake Union Publishing for this copy of the book that I read and reviewed honestly and voluntarily. 

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