Book ~ "No-One Ever Has Sex On Holiday" (2019) Tracy Bloom

From Goodreads ~ Katy and Ben and their four closest friends are going to Spain for a week with their kids. Sun, sex and sangria? Almost certainly not. 

The couples think they are prepared for all the joys and trials a family holiday has to offer but they have a shock coming, and not only from the kids. Into their first day by the pool crashes Ollie, who has just been dumped by his girlfriend, and Cassie, on her hen party holiday but having serious doubts about her impending marriage. 

A recipe for a relaxing week abroad? Let’s wait and see ...

Katy and Ben are married and have two young children.  They plan a holiday at a resort in Spain with friends ... Daniel and Gabriel and their young daughter, and Braindead and Ally and their young son.

On the plane from England, Katy, Ally and Daniel meet Ruth who is part of  Cassie's bachelorette party.  They get invited to some of their partying, which doesn't make some of the people in their group happy since it's supposed to be a family vacation.  As Katy gets to know Cassie, she realizes that Cassie doesn't actually want to get married and tries to guide her to make the right decision.  The families also meet Ollie, who is on his brideless honeymoon because she dumped him shortly before the ceremony, and they pull them into their circle to help him move on.  The three couples had been looking forward to relaxing and recharging and enjoying their spouse's company ... and of course, nothing goes as planned.

This was the fifth book I read by this author and I liked it.  Though it is the fifth in the No-One Has Sex series (and the third one I've read), you don't have to read the others to know what's going on.  I liked the writing style ... it was a quick light read.  It is written in third person perspective with the focus on wherever the action is.  The language at times is for mature readers.  It's written by an English author with English characters and I didn't, as a Canadian, get some of the English references to people, TV shows, etc.

I look forward to other books in this series.

Book ~ "Dinner Party" (2018) Tracy Bloom

From Goodreads ~ Never has an unexpected guest caused such chaos!

Three couples take it in turns to host a monthly dinner party.

Beth, Sarah and Marie have been friends forever. Now they are grown up, with busy lives, busy husbands, busy kids ... but they still find time to meet up over dinner once a month. A cosy, comfortable gathering of happy couples - or so they thought.

Until one night, someone brings along a last-minute guest whose wife has just left him.

Simon is standing on the doorstep in floods of tears. While the women do their best to console him, their husbands feel the need to mark their territory.

And as Simon becomes more involved with the group, his presence changes everything these three couples thought they knew about each other, leading to a final dinner party that no-one will ever forget.

Beth, Sarah and Marie are in their mid-forties and have been friends since school.  Once a month, they and their husbands meet at one of their houses for a dinner party.  When it's Beth and Chris' turn, he had forgotten to tell her that he had invited his friend, Simon.  Simon and his wife had just split up (she had been cheating on him) and he was heartbroken.  Beth has been exasperated with Chris for a while and it's all she can do to control herself.  When Simon arrives, the three friends are drawn to him, something a couple of the husbands notice.  As the months go on and the dinner parties continue to happen, Simon becomes more and more part of their lives and what is lacking in their own lives becomes apparent.

This was the fourth book I read by this author and I thought it was okay.  I liked the writing style ... it's a quick easy read.  It is written by an English author so there are some references and terminology I didn't get.  It's written in third person perspective from different perspectives (the chapters are labeled so you know whose voice it is).  In addition, Beth had won a dinner party hosted by a chef and leading up to that, a journalist would be interviewing everyone.  At the end of each chapter, there is a short interview between the journalist and one of the seven main characters.  As a head's up, there is swearing.

I wasn't crazy about the majority of the characters.  The only ones I liked were Simon, Chris (though he seemed overly obsessed about dips), Duncan and Issy (Duncan's assistant).  I don't know how these three women stayed friends all these years because they were usually nasty and snippy with each other.  Tony, Sarah's husband, was an arrogant controlling jerk and I don't know why Sarah stayed married to him.

Book ~ "The Last Laugh" (2018) Tracy Bloom

From Goodreads ~ Jenny discovers her days are numbered at the same time she discovers her husband is having an affair.

Frankly, her life was tough enough already. Two tricky teenagers, her mother’s constant complaints, friends who aren’t up to the job and a career which has been spiralling downwards since she won ‘Sunseeker Tour Rep of the Season’ twenty years ago.

And now this: a cheating husband and a death sentence.

Enough is enough. Jenny vows to keep both catastrophes a secret. She takes her life - and death - into her own hands and decides to live as she did when she was happiest … in 1996. She plans a spectacular 1990’s themed party in place of a wake that she herself will attend. But will she be able to keep her secrets for long enough to have the party of a lifetime?

Jenny is in her mid-forties.  She is married to Mark, who she met twenty years ago when she was a tour rep in Greece and he was on vacation.  Mark is now successful and working long hours and is rarely around.  Jenny works in a retirement home as an entertainment coordinator for the residents.  Jenny and Mark have two teenage children ... a daughter who only cares about her best friend and a son who has anxiety issues.  Jenny's mother is judgmental towards her.  Jenny's father has dementia and she takes care of him when her mother needs to run errands.

Jenny has been having health issues.  Her doctor tells her that she has terminal cancer with 18 to 24 months left.  She heads over to tell her husband the news only to find him bent over a filing cabinet having sex with a blonde.  So she backs away and keeps her cancer and her husband's affair a secret.

Jenny feels  her life peaked in 1996.  She had a great job as a tour rep, she had great fun friends and she looked and felt great.  That year, her 25th birthday party was the best memory ever!  Rather than having a wake after she's gone, she decides to recreate that birthday while she is still here to enjoy it (her recent birthday was a disappointment).

This was the third book I read by this author and I thought it was okay.  I liked the writing style.  It's written in first person perspective from Jenny's point of view.  Given the subject matter, it was a bit of a tough book to read.  As a head's up, there is swearing.

I wasn't crazy about the characters.  Jenny was a doormat and had let life pass her by.  Her family (except for her son) treated her like crap and she took it.  Mark had turned into an unsupporting cold jerk and she didn't feel close enough to him to let him know there was something wrong or to have with her at her doctor's appointment.  It was hard to believe she would put up with the backtalk she did from her daughter.  With the way her mother treated her, I'm surprised she did anything for her when she obviously favoured Jenny's brother, Antony, a surgeon, who was too busy to spend time with the family.  Jenny had fallen into a job at the retirement home and was too lazy to move on and do something else.  She let her old friendships go and her current friends are more like acquaintances.  She had no one to turn to when she received such devastating news.  I like that Jenny grew a backbone as the story progressed.

Book ~ "No-One Ever Has Sex On Christmas Day" (2017) Tracy Bloom

From Goodreads ~ Don’t you always plan the perfect Christmas?

Don’t you always think it will be the best one ever?

And doesn’t something – usually one of your loved ones – always come along and screw it up?

Katy’s been spending too much time in the office and not enough time with her family so she wants it all: snow (fake or real), the Michael Bublé Christmas album, whatever it takes.

There’s only one thing missing as far as her husband Ben is concerned: another baby to complete their family. Katy isn’t so sure.

Ben may be playing the role of Master Elf in the pre-school nativity but he is struggling to master his own family life. With romantically-challenged friends, an ex who refuses to go away and Katy's mum's 64-year-old toy boy thrown into the mix, Christmas looks like it could be going off the rails.  Never mind family planning, can Katy and Ben even plan to make it to the end of Christmas Day?

Katy and Ben are married and have a three-year-old daughter, Millie.  Katy has a great job that she loves but it takes up a lot of her time.  Ben was a stay-at-home dad until he decided to go back to work at Millie's preschool.  They have recently bought a house and Ben thinks it's time they start working on baby number two.  Katy is undecided but because she is forty, she knows she doesn't have a lot of time left to have a baby.

Ben's friend, Braindead, is ready to pop the question to his long-time girlfriend and he works with Daniel, Katy's gay colleague, to make it splashy.

Katy's 70ish mom has left her husband (Katy's dad) and has a new boy toy (a Spaniard in his 60s).  They are planning to stay with Katy and Ben over the Christmas holidays and Katy's not looking forward to it.  She's got enough going on in her life.

Matthew and Allison are expecting baby number four.  His divorced friend, Ian, is ready to settle down and has his eye on someone that could disrupt Matthew and Allison's life, which doesn't make Allison happy (she doesn't like Ian at the best of times).

This was the second book I read by this author and I enjoyed it.  Though it is the third is the No-One Has Sex series, you don't have to read the first two to know what's going on.  I'd read the first one but not the second one ... I actually liked this one better than the first one.  I liked the writing style ... it was well-paced and was a quick fun read.  The language at times is for mature readers.

I look forward to other books in this series.

Book ~ "No-One Ever Has Sex On A Tuesday" (2013) Tracy Bloom

From Goodreads ~ Never has a late-night stand led to such chaos! 

Childhood sweethearts Matthew and Katy agree they must never see each other ever again after they end up in bed together following a school reunion. 

So all is forgotten ... until eight months later when a shock meeting at an antenatal class forces them to confront the fact that Matthew could be the father of Katy's baby. Oblivious to the mayhem unfolding, Matthew's highly strung wife frets over giving birth to twins and Katy's much younger boyfriend refuses to take fatherhood seriously. 

Love and life are messy but Katy and Matthew take things to a whole new level as deep emotions begin to resurface and hormones run riot. How will they navigate their way through this almighty pick-up?

Katy and Matthew were high sweethearts but broke up at the beginning of their first year of university.  She was hurt so badly that she never let anyone get close to her again.  She has been dating Ben, who is eight years younger than she is.  They have a carefree fun relationship.

Katy and Matthew hook up at their 20th high school reunion.  Eight months later they run into each other at prenatal classes ... Matthew and his wife are pregnant with twins.  Katy's baby could be Ben's but it could also be Matthew's.

This was the first book I read by this author and it was okay.  I liked the writing style ... it was well-paced for the most part and kept me interested.  The editing could have been better ... there was a lack of punctuation and typos.  The language at times is for mature readers.

I can't say that I was crazy about the main characters.  I didn't think it was right that Katy let Ben think that the baby was his (it could have been his or it could have been Matthew's).  And I found it unbelievable that Katy was still being influenced by the hurt from Matthew twenty years ago ... they were just kids when they broke up!  Get over it!  I found Ben annoying at first ... he seemed a lot younger than his late 20s.  I started liking him more towards the end.  I didn't like Matthew at all ... I thought he was a pompous A-hole.  I found it amazing that after twenty years, he felt he could come back and be involved in Katy's life with no regard to anyone else.  Though I didn't like his wife, Allison, I felt sorry for her.  Daniel and Braindead were amusing.

All in all, I'd checked out other books by this author.