View source for How to Get a Love Life by Rosie Blake

{{infobox1
|title=How to Get a Love Life
|author=Rosie Blake
|reviewer= Zoe Morris
|genre=Women's Fiction
|summary= A straight forward story that seems vaguely familiar, this sees Nicola trying to find a date by a deadline. Sweet and amusing but lacking any real oompf.
|rating=3
|buy=Maybe
|borrow=Yes
|pages=320
|publisher= Corvus 
|date=February 2017
|isbn= 978-1782398646
|website= https://rosieblake.co.uk/
|video=RG6xGLKmQxA
|cover=1782398643
|aznuk=1782398643
|aznus=1782398643
}}

Nicola is the sort of girl who knows what's for dinner based on what day of the week it is. Meticulously tidy, she employs a cleaner as well just to make doubly sure nothing is out of place. And you can set your watch by the time she eats her daily treat of a Mini Roll. Not all of this is bad. I believe in scheduled relaxation, and felt my heart skip a beat when, on the first day of our  honeymoon, we received a schedule with our activities for the week. But the point is, Nicola is at the far end of the spectrum, and she certainly does not seem the kind to have a messy, chaotic love life.

Encouraged by her friend and work colleague to stop moping around and do something with herself, she agrees to go along with a very uncharacteristic dare to bag herself a bloke by Valentine's Day, come what may. And, what may come, are a run of very bad dates with increasingly unsuitable men. 

To start with, I found this a tame and fun story, because there's nothing many of us like more than reading about other people's failures. As a smug married (I started this one on the beach the day after the wedding) I relished some of her mishaps, even as the husband (eeek) sagely pointed out that perhaps I should hide the cover, lest people worry why I was searching for a love life at that time. However, as the pages turned things went slightly wayward.

This is not a bad book, but the more I read the more familiar it seemed. The words were new, the characters original, and yet it all seemed a bit familiar. I knew before they met which boys would not be suitable for Nicola. And I guessed way too early on which one she might be ending up with. It's a new book of an old story, and I was sorry to realise not much else was going to happen. There is a point to the story, but it ambles away from this quite happily on repeated occasions. I also thought the issue with Nicola's fastidiousness slipped away too easily. As a fellow things-in-order freak I would not have given up on my ways so soon and with such little fight.

The book had many funny moments, but they did not entirely fit together, and the story seemed somewhat disorganised. The prologue set a scene we then worked our way back to, but it gave me the feel of a different story than the one that then unfolded. It's a cute story but in a sea of chick-lit, it didn't stand out or remain with me for more than the briefest of moments after I finished the final chapter.

It's worth your time when you've run out of things to read, but my view would be it doesn't need to be near the top of the pile.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending us a copy to review.  We also have a review of [[How to Find your (First) Husband by Rosie Blake]].

If you are a fan of this genre, we would also recommend  [[The One That Got Away by Melissa Pimentel]]

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