Title: Wallbanger
Author: Alice Clayton
Publisher/Year: Gallery Books 8/13/13
Length: 384
Series: Cocktail #1
Overview
The first night after Caroline moves into her fantastic new San Francisco apartment, she realizes she’s gaining an—um—intimate knowledge of her new neighbor’s nocturnal adventures. Thanks to paper-thin walls and the guy’s athletic prowess, she can hear not just his bed banging against the wall but the ecstatic response of what seems (as loud night after loud night goes by) like an endless parade of women. And since Caroline is currently on a self-imposed “dating hiatus,” and her neighbor is clearly lethally attractive to women, she finds her fantasies keep her awake even longer than the noise. So when the wallbanging threatens to literally bounce her out of bed, Caroline, clad in sexual frustration and a pink baby-doll nightie, confronts Simon Parker, her heard-but-never-seen neighbor. The tension between them is as thick as the walls are thin, and the results just as mixed. Suddenly, Caroline is finding she may have discovered a whole new definition of neighborly…
In a delicious mix of silly and steamy, Alice Clayton dishes out a hot and hilarious tale of exasperation at first sight.
My Thoughts
So, what i thought i was goiing to get with this series and what i actually got were 2 different things – but i guess that’s not a bad thing since i enjoyed this introduction to the series. what we have here is much more ‘Chick Lit’ than Erotica, but again, not a bad thing.
So – like the overview says, we have an interesting story of a guy who’s clearly ‘got game’ and a girl who’s very attractive, successful yet on a hiatus from her ‘O’ – it’s disappeared as a result of bad sex, and well, that stress makes the tension between them way too strong.
Through an interesting twist of fate, their paths cross outside of their apartment, at a party thrown by Caroline’s boss, and from there, things spiral. Simon has 2 friends that are instantly drawn to Caroline’s 2 friends and those couples are quick to form. Where they net out though, that’s the fun with the story as well.
As for these 2 developing lovers, i like that their journey is gradual – that it’s what would happen in real life. you don’t always fall into something quickly and either succeed like a lot of other stories make it or crash and burn which i think it’s actual real life results. In this case they are doing what regular folks would do and sort out what they are to each other and what they want, especially since they each have their own fair share of issues to deal with.
The biggest challenge that i have with this story is that there were a few story lines that were introduced that could have taken things a lot further – made it a bit deeper, yet we never quite went there. When Caroline learns about Simon’s parents, i kind of felt like it would have a bigger impact down the line and we never get to see that. I also felt like the introduction of James – Caroline’s ex was something that would have been a bigger thing and it never quite got to that point either.
This is also one of the first times that i’ve come across this author and i have to say that her style of writing for the most part really entertained me. There was the classic style of telling the story – as we see in almost all books, and then there were segments that were ‘text’ conversations that made it more contemporary – since you know that each of the characters had side bits to talk about and it’s what would have happened in real life. The weird thing though is that after about page 100, i wondered why there were still 200+ more pages to go, and yet the story kept going on and on. I don’t know that 300+ pages was necessary, but i read it, enjoyed it, and will continue on with the series. i hope you guys do too since i can’t wait to meet Mimi, Sophia, Ryan and Neil in their own stories.