Book Review: Wallbanger

Wallbanger, by Alice Clayton.

Unreal ... More spanking and then the unmistakable sound of a male voice, groaning and sighing. 

I got up, moved the entire bed a few inches away from the wall, and huffed back under the duvet, glaring at the wall the entire time.

I fell asleep that night after swearing I would bang back if I heard one more peep. Or groan. Or spank.

Welcome to the neighborhood, Caroline.

My friend The Romance Bookie highly recommended Wallbanger in her review, and I was excited to randomly receive a copy in the mail a few weeks ago. It ended up being a cute story, although some parts weren't entirely to my liking.

Official synopsis:

Definitely an intriguing cover ... 

Caroline Reynolds has a fantastic new apartment in San Francisco, a KitchenAid mixer, 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, since her move, she has an oversexed neighbor with the loudest late-night wallbanging she’s ever heard. Each 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. (No, really, Simon, please enter.) 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. Ahem. With walls this thin, the tension’s gonna be thick…

In her third novel, Alice Clayton returns to dish her trademark mix of silly and steamy. Banter, barbs, and strutting pussycats, plus the sexiest apple pie ever made, are dunked in a hot tub and set against the gorgeous San Francisco skyline in this hot and hilarious tale of exasperation at first sight.
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Caroline and her girlfriends in this book kind of reminded me of the women in Sex and the City - always hanging out and gossiping. I really liked how the author included some other POVs (other than Caroline's) in the novel, as well as texts between many different characters and other conversations. There was one chapter where we get to snoop on their thoughts, but that one went on a little long, in my opinion.

The main male character in this book, Simon, was definitely a "book boyfriend" as well (one you'd like to exist in real life ...), and he and Caroline were great together. I will say that I was surprised to learn at one point that she is 26 (my age) and he's 28 in the novel - she has a great job and fantastic friends and apartment, and I had assumed she was in her early 30s, for some reason.

This novel is good if you're looking for a light, fun read (I'd say "summer read" but it's already October, ha), and it does have my recommendation overall - however, I was hoping it would have been a little better than it actually was.

3 stars out of 5.

*Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for reviewing purposes. The opinions expressed here, however, are my own.