Rowena’s review of Wallbanger (Cocktail #1) by Alice Clayton.

The first night after Caroline moves into her fantastic new San Francisco apartment, she realizes she’s gaining an 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…

I first heard about this book when Holly read it. She said it was hilarious so I knew that I was going to pick it up. I finally did when it became a book club pick and like Holly, I laughed my ass off while reading this book.

Caroline lives in an apartment with paper thin walls. They’re so thin that she can hear every single time that her playboy neighbor has someone over and is enjoying his time with them. At first, she’s pretty impressed and a little bit jealous of the girl but when it becomes a regular thing (with more than one partner), she’s no longer impressed or jealous. She’s just flat out pissed (and a little bit grossed out). She’s so pissed that she marches her pink teddy wearing self over to his apartment and bangs on his door to give him a piece of her mind. That’s when the shenanigans begin.

Simon and Caroline were fun. Getting to know them had me laughing one minute and frustrated as all get out the next minute. The book started off good. Both main characters were interesting, they were funny but they were also annoying. The way that Caroline kept talking to her elusive O? The first time, it was funny but over the course of the book, I wanted to choke her because who the hell does that? Ugh.

The fighting and the bickering was funny at first but I think it went on for too long and then everything goes great and the perfect ending for this book would have been that trip to Spain. I didn’t think anything after Spain was necessary. I thought they should have gotten their shit together by then and faded out into the Spanish sunset. But then Spain happened and I wanted to smack the shit out of  Caroline. She was too in her head a lot of the times and it drove me batty.

Simon was a pretty great hero, aside from the fact that he was banging three different women when we first meet him. I wasn’t a fan of that but Simon completely won me over so meh, I guess that didn’t bother me too much.

Overall, this book was predictable but still entertaining. Simon and Caroline finally get it right in the end and I was glad for it. Their friends were all pretty great but the downside to this funny book is that it took too long to end…and I heard that they get another book in this series? Is that really needed?

Grade: 3.5 out of 5

This book is available from Omnific Publishing. You can purchase it here or here in e-format.