Girl 99 by Andy Jones

 

Before Tom finds The One, he needs to find himself.

When Tom’s girlfriend walks out on him the day before Christmas, he feels humiliated but not necessarily heartbroken. Sadie wasn’t, after all, The One. If we’re being precise, she was number eighty-five.

Tom’s first mistake is sharing this information with his best friend El. His next mistake is listening when El suggests that he bring his eighty-five up to a nice, neat one hundred.

It was never going to be a good idea, not least because everything else in Tom’s life is in complete chaos. His best friend is dying of a slow and cruel disease, his teenage sister is at war with his well-meaning but dogmatic father, his elderly neighbour is having romantic problems (and makes a dreadful cup of tea), and he has to shoot four commercials with four children and a bad-tempered producer.

And then Tom meets Verity. Whether she’s The One remains to be seen, but she’s certainly more than just another number.

This is my second book by Andy Jones with the first being The Two of Us which I thoroughly enjoyed and I was over the moon when I started reading this to find that our much loved El from that book is in this one and for me it was the biggest highlight. El and our main character Tom are best friends and after Tom makes a mistake which results in him becoming newly single its El who sets the wheels in motion putting a bet forward for Tom to get his bed post notches up to 100!

This is a typical lad lit novel that brought out a few chuckles here and there as we follow Tom on his somewhat entertaining mission to win his bet but there are more than a few bumps along the way. We do get to see a more caring side of Tom when time is spent with friends and family so he doesn't come across as some cheap playboy but his actions do none the less feel very ladish and it was great to see him come unstuck at times.

It was an easy read with humour, loss, friendship and a little romance aside from the obvious but still for me I really looked forward to the parts which feature El and Tom together and I greedily wish there was more moments with them but I appreciate this book was Tom's story not El's.