From the publisher:
Penny wise or pound foolish? A heartbroken young Brit decides to turn his love life over to the flip of a coin—in this delightfully British rom-com in the vein of Jenny Colgan, Rosie Curtis, Nick Hornby, and David Nicholls.
To coin a phrase, Josh is suffering a quarter-life crisis. He just broke up with his long-term girlfriend, lost his job, and moved back home with his parents (shudder). Welcome to rock bottom in Bristol. As Josh starts questioning all his life choices, he has a mad thought: Maybe he would just be better flipping a coin. After all, careful planning has landed him homeless, jobless, and single.
What starts as a joke soon becomes serious and Josh decides to start putting his faith in the capriciousness of currency. He doesn’t have anything to lose.
But when the chance of a lifetime and the girl of his dreams are on the line, will the coin guide him to a rich love life or leave him flat broke?
I am always curious about a contemporary romance novel written by a man. There aren’t a lot of them, but I like to read them just for an opposing viewpoint. This is a debut novel so double the pleasure; I love finding new authors as well.
This book opens on New Years Eve (probably 2019) and our hero, Josh, has made elaborate plans. You see, he is going to propose to his long term girlfriend and he wants it to be memorable. He reserves something called the “London Eye”, a glass bubble high above London with spectacular views. The occupants get to spend a predetermined amount of time in the bubble, and about halfway through, Josh drops to his knee to propose. Unfortunately, the girlfriend says no and to add coal to the fire, also tells him she’s been cheating on him. They get to spend an additional 28 minutes in the glass bubble after that. Painful, to say the least.
But that’s not the end of Josh’s troubles. Since his now ex-girlfriend is also the boss’s daughter, he feels compelled to resign his position. And since he lives with the ex-girlfriend in her spectacular loft, it means he has to move back in with his parents, your basic nightmare existence for a twenty-something. The icing on the cake? He arrives at his parents’ house to an engagement party.
He sneaks out of the party to watch a movie with his Pap, who offers him a coin to toss to determine which movie to watch. Since all the decisions he has made have not worked out, he decides to let the coin decide his life for the next year. He figures it can’t do any worse than he did.
The coin leads him on some crazy adventures, including chasing a girl all over Europe (but not in a stalker-ish way.) He learns a lot about himself throughout the year, and it was such a pleasure reading all about it. This is a very funny yet heartwarming read, and I just loved it. I am looking forward to more from this author. Highly recommend!
1/2021 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
THE FLIP SIDE by James Bailey. William Morrow Paperbacks (November 17, 2020). ISBN 978-0063019393. 384 pages.
Kindle
Audible
Related
This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2021 at 9:58 AM and is filed under Book Reviews, Fiction, Romance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Stacy Alesi's BookBitch.com™ 