14th June 2014 – Book Review: It Had To Be You by Lynda Renham

 

Summer’s here, the sun’s out, the birds are chirping and everyone has their sunnies and flip flops out! To mark the coming of summer, there are some amazing summer reads out and one of these happens to be Lynda Renham’s hysterically funny, witty and mood lifting novel ‘It Had To Be You’. Lynda’s forte has always been humorous romances and she does not fail to impress this time around with her latest offering.

‘It Had To Be You’ is hapless heroine Binki Grayson’s story. Binki is down on her luck as on a particularly disastrous Christmas Eve, her life unravels. After being sexually propositioned by her odious boss, she is fired unceremoniously when she turns him down in no uncertain terms. On coming home early, she finds her boyfriend Oliver ‘in flagrante delicto’ with his own boss in their shared apartment! Out of work and out of a boyfriend, Binki leaves the apartment she shared with Oliver to find solace with her parents. Once there, she discovers that she has inherited a house from her deceased Aunt Vera. However, Aunt Vera, it seems did not quite make up her mind and has also left the house to her financial advisor, the rich, handsome and infinitely arrogant William Ellis.

Unfortunately for Binki, William has already made his home in ‘Driftwood’, the house that Aunt Vera bequeathed to one of them and what follows is a story of comic mishaps, dodgy dealings, jilted lovers, sex shop shenanigans and loads and loads of chocolate (for those of us who love chocolates).

Binki is a loveable, scatty heroine who does not fit the size zero ideal. She loves her chocolate and is charmingly self-deprecating. I absolutely loved her observations in the novel, right from her descriptions of Oliver’s man-hunting boss Amanda’s ample assets and her detailed analysis of her lecherous ex boss, wart-nosed and all, down to her candidness about her failed attempts to diet and her hilarious thoughts on William Ellis’s vitamin taking and condom collecting habits. Similarly, William Ellis is the ideal hero, slightly mysterious and arrogant at first but the reader gets to know more of him as the novel commences and they cannot help but start to like him.

Renham’s writing hooks the reader and the story flows as Binki and William’s initial hostility with one another gives away to lasting and easy friendship and ultimately things start to get complicated as deeper feelings develop. A further spanner in the works is thrown, when Oliver, Binki’s cheating boyfriend goes on a mission to win her back and ultimately make her his wife. William has a complication of his own in the form Andrea, his own ex-fiancée who loved him and left him due to his workaholic tendencies but now wants him back.

The story is hugely entertaining and will appeal to fans of Sophie Kinsella, Marian Keyes and Jenny Colgan. It has plenty of humour, a huge dash of romance and amazing chemistry between the hero and heroine. For me the chemistry between the lead pair is the most important aspect of any chick lit novel and it is for this very reason that I feel chick lit aficionados everywhere will adore this book. This book is entertaining from start to finish and you must watch out for the soap opera-like ending and a mini cat fight in the end, which would give any current Hollywood feuds a run for their money! A sweetly nostalgic touch is added as Tony Bennett’s ‘It Had to Be You’ plays an important part in the story.

I give this novel a very apt four and a half stars and urge you to read it! ‘It Had to be You’ is published by Raccous Publishing and is out now.