Book ~ "The Flood" (2016) Steven Scaffardi

From Goodreads ~ One bet, four girls, eight weeks, multiple dates. What could possibly go wrong?

Following his traumatic eight month dry spell, Dan Hilles is back in the driving seat and ready to put his dating disasters behind him.

But if only it were that simple.

After a drunken afternoon in the pub, fuelled by the confidence of alcohol, Dan makes a bet with his three best pals that will complicate his lovelife more than ever when he brazenly declares that he could juggle multiple women all at the same time.

With just eight weeks to prove his point, Dan is about to find out how hard it is to date a flood of women without them all finding out about each other, especially when they come in the shape of an ex-girlfriend, a stalker, the office ice queen and the one that got away.

Dan is not a serial dater.  It's all he can do to date one woman at a time.  But during a bout of drinking, he boasts to his best friends, Rob, Jack and Ollie, that he can date four woman in eight weeks.  His friends take him up on the bet and now he just has to find four women who will actually go out with him.

He ends up dating a "flood" of women ... a stalker with a psycho ex-boyfriend, his ex-girlfriend, a co-worker who doesn't give him the time of day until she thinks he's a "bad boy" and "the one who got away".  His best friend, Kelly, who he usually turns to for advice about women, is spending a year travelling.

In addition to trying to win the bet, Dan becomes even more stressed out trying to keep the four women from finding out about each other.  In the meantime, he is sharing an apartment with a strange guy named Tuna who doesn't seem to have a job and is intent on getting a dog.

I enjoyed this book and liked the humorous writing style.  This is lad-lit (chick-lit for men) so it was interesting reading from a male perspective.  It's written in first person perspective from Dan's point of view.  The story is based in London and the author is English.  As such, there are phrases and expressions that are specific to being English that I wasn't familiar with so they lost their meaning for me.  The language and activities are for a mature reader.

Though it is the follow-up to The Drought (which was hilarious), this works as a stand alone as there is enough background from that book provided.  The end of the book provides a tease of a third book to come with Dan, Rob, Jack and Ollie.

I received a copy of this ebook from the author in return for my honest opinion.

Book ~ "The Drought" (2011) Steven Scaffardi

From Goodreads ~ Dan Hilles is a pretty regular kind of guy - regular job, regular bunch of mates, regular male aversion to shopping. But following his break-up with long-term girlfriend, Stacey, he finds himself single again. He's been out of the game for a while and is a little out of practice. Soon, the very irregular and increasingly worrying issue in Dan's life is the extended drought he finds himself suffering. And we're not talking the climate change, scorched earth, God I'm parched variety.

You've got to hand it to Dan though - it certainly isn't from a lack of trying. With stalwart mates Ollie, Jack and Rob on hand to lend their collective pearls of male wisdom and arrange the odd road trip, you'd think Dan's days of languishing in a sexual wilderness would be numbered. Even best friends can't help prevent the kind of surreal holes Dan just can't seem to help digging himself into. And with each failed attempt, his self-esteem plummets to the point where he wonders if 'little Dan' will ever work again.

Good job he has Kelly, his reliable and sympathetic colleague, to confide in. As a woman, she can perhaps shed some female light on why he's failing so miserably with the opposite sex, balancing out the testosterone-fuelled 'advice' from the lads. Surely Dan can't go wrong with Kelly teaching him the various intricacies of a woman's mind.

Steven Scaffardi's first novel will have every guy laughing out loud in recognition and every girl secretly worrying - is this how men really think? A new talent to watch out for on the 'lad-lit' scene.

When the book starts, it's September 13 and Dan has just gotten tossed out of a bar, where he was drowning his sorrows, by a female bartender.

Then Dan takes us back nine months earlier, to January 1, to fill us in on how he ended up in this predicament.   He and his girlfriend of three years, Stacey, had just broken up.  They had grown apart since they graduated from university last year ... she'd gotten nasty and clingy.

It's been a while since he's been single and his friends, Rob (the funny one), Jack (the cheating one) and Ollie (the big slow one), are more than happy to give him advice and get him back out there.  As the months go by, Dan isn't looking for a girlfriend, he just wants some action and this becomes their mission. We go on many dates with Dan, all ending in various kinds of disasters.  Poor Dan!

Dan has a sales job and he suspects his boss ("please call me Dick") has a crush on him.  What gets Dan  through the day plus giving him a woman's perspective is the platonic friendship he has with his colleague, Kelly.

I really enjoyed this book and liked the humorous writing style.  It is hilarious!  This is lad-lit (chick-lit for men) so it was interesting reading about a break-up from a male perspective.  The story is based in the London area and the author is English.  As such, there are phrases and expressions that are specific to being English and some I wasn't familiar with (but it wasn't hard to figure it out).  The language and actions are for a mature reader.

I hope Steven writes many more books like this because I'll be reading them!