Adult Review ~ Wallbanger by Alice Clayton

Publication Date: November 27, 2012
Publisher: Omnific Publishers
Source: Purchased Ebook

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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.

*Adult for language and sexual situations

My Review:

Caroline's life is pretty picture perfect.  She's got everything most young successful women would want; good job, awesome boss, great friends, a cat that she can have conversations with (huh?), nice new apartment clad with hot neighbor who has three, count them three, girlfriends.  All of which continue to interrupt her precious sleep schedule with their very loud orgasms. You know, that thing that she hasn't had in years. Yes, years.  Okay, so maybe she doesn't had everything most young successful women would want.

She tries to curb her annoyance of the naughty neighbor by consuming herself with his love life.  She imagines what each woman is like and comes up with clever names for them.  Purina is the one that meows. Cheeky!  She stares through the peephole as they leave trying to glean some inside knowledge on what exactly this mysterious neighbors life must be.

“I started to roll my eyes, but that hurt. The right one was pressed so firmly against the peephole, you see.”

Alas, after several weeks of very little uninterrupted sleep, she gives up on being Miss Nice Neighbor and in the middle of The Wallbanger's (aptly named for the fact that his sex life knocks pictures off her walls) hot nightly routine ~ she walk's over and returns the favor of halting a good thing.  They battle it out with words and come to a mutual dislike of each other.

Their worlds get intertwined by mutual friends and it sets Caroline and Simon (Wallbanger) up for what turns into an absolutely charismatic friendship.  I was so thoroughly charmed by the rapport of these two.  The romance doesn't start right away.  They go from loathing to tolerance to pure friendship in a natural progression.  Yes it is all lined with a big old spoonful of sexual tension but it's also sugary sweet and it makes it so so easy to fall in love with both of these characters.

Oh, and the humor! The 'funny' is by far the strongest part of the book.  I think I could read anything Clayton writes for the humor alone. I giggled the entire time, which is saying a lot because I am not a giggler.

Eventually there is love and heartache which turns into anger and more love and a ton of sex all in search for that missing O.  And that is where the book started to fall apart for me.

There is such a slow and intense build up to the sex and it worked really really well but then BAM! I mean BAM!! It's nothing but sex and sex and more sex followed by some hot sex.  To the point where it wasn't even exciting anymore, just kind of annoying and found myself skimming.

Then, to end it all you have a chapter written by the cat.  You know the one Caroline has actual conversations with? Yup, he gets his very own chapter and it was odd.  I think it was meant to be cute, as the cat has a fairly ample presence in the book, but it just didn't work for me.

The first 90% of this book was an absolute joy to read and I won't hold back on reading other titles by Clayton.  The last 10% was a tad peculiar for my liking but never the less this was a very entertaining read.

 

3.5 Stars