Book Review: What’s Your Number?

By Becky Gulc

This 2006 book by Karyn Bosnak has been re-published to coincide with the release of the film adaptation starring Anna Faris and Chris Evans. If you have missed the trailers, where have you been?!

"What's Your Number?" follows Delilah Darling, a single woman in her late twenties who by her own admission is ‘easy’. Delilah loses her job, finds out her younger sister is getting married and reaches the dreaded twentieth notch on her bedpost all within a short space of time. Much to Delilah’s despair, number 20 was meant to be "the one!" After reading that the average number of sexual partners is 10.5, Delilah feels ashamed and imposes a ban on any further partners, convincing herself that if 10.5 is the average, she must have already have slept with "the one." Delilah decides to use her six-week redundancy pay to embark on a solo road-trip to revisit as many of the "20" as she can, to try and rekindle something, anything, being admittedly desperate to find the one. She draws on her neighbour Colin’s detective skills to help her find them (under the guise of her throwing a party for her old friends of course).

We embark on this road-trip with Delilah as she visits and stumbles across boyfriends and "encounters" from time gone-by. As she heads off to find each one we find out about their history, and inevitably, the flaws of many of the exes had before we’re introduced to them in the present. Whilst you can’t help wonder why anyone would want to go and seek out many of these men again the desperation of the character comes across comically throughout, and each encounter with an ex is laugh-out-loud funny. Delilah Darling is a character that will literally do anything to gain access to these exes, to say some of them are in hard to reach places is an understatement!

I found this book to be a hugely entertaining and amusing light-read. I also loved the little quirks in the book like using footnotes for further information. Delilah is a bit mad and if you were her friend you’d want to reign her in, but she’s likeable as are the supporting characters, especially the granddad and the dog. Whilst the premise didn’t sound very realistic of hunting down the exes based on the reasons things never worked out in the first place - once you just accept it and go with the flow it is a very funny read indeed. You may also predict the ending early on but to be honest, it didn’t matter.

A recommended read from me, and yes I do plan to go and see the film just to see if they capture the comic moments as well as they were written!

More by Karyn Bosnak:


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