"Dinner for Two" by Mike Gayle

Dinner for Two by Mike Gayle

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Genre: fiction, relationship book
On my TBR list: no



Synopsis, from Goodreads:

Dave Harding's got a wonderful wife, a beautiful home, and a job he could do in his sleep... So no one is more surprised than Dave when he hears his own biological clock start ticking. Loudly. Unfortunately, his better half, Izzy, has no nine-month plan for fat ankles or a credit line at Baby Gap. With even worse timing, the music magazine Dave writes for folds. Desperate for work, he's forced to become an advice columnist for a teen magazine. But he's about to get a serious wake-up call. Wading through letter after letter of adolescent angst is the last thing Dave wants to do, especially since he could use some help dealing with his own. But one letter is about to make all his little problems disappear -- and replace them with one big one. The letter is from a teenage girl named Nicola. But she doesn't need advice about boys, or friends, or the latest fads. She's looking for her father, whom she's never met. She's looking for a man to call Dad. She's looking for Dave.

Dinner for Two is the book I ended up with when I finished my other book early on vacation. It came from the cruise ship's library. I don't read a lot of books by male authors. It isn't on purpose; it's just that the types of stories I read are usually written by women. A relationship novel written by a man was a pleasant surprise for me. It was like being inside a guy's head and hearing all the thoughts that you suspected men had about love and relationships but that they rarely express.

This novel is written almost like my husband's talking style -- brief and to the point. Some of the chapters are only a page long and chronicle a conversation or an incident that add to the flavor of Dave's life more than furthering the story. This has bothered me before in other books, but it seemed to fit in this one.

I am undecided as to whether I will read another of Gayle's books, but I enjoyed trying out something that I wouldn't have picked up at home.

View all my reviews >>