Twenty Times A Lady by Karyn Bosnak

I picked this novel off of my TBR pile because my friend had informed me that it was the book that the film What's your number? is based on. I had seen the film and loved it, but that had been some time ago and so it was the right moment for me to begin reading the novel. 

The protagonist, Delilah Darling was such an endearing character because I think that she represents something that I wish I could have more of in my own life. That thing is blind faith. Delilah Darling is the kind of woman that goes all out. She is fearless. Of course she also had absolutely no idea who she was or what she wanted, but somehow I managed to forgive this because she was quite frankly just hilarious! 

The story begins at a time when Delilah's life gets turned upside down. She loses her job, her beloved grandfather moves to the other side of the country, her younger sister is getting married and she has just read an article that says the national average of men that American women have slept with is ten and she's on... 19! After vowing off sex her self-control lapses yet again and after a drunken night with her ex-boss she bumps her number up to 20. Normally this would be exactly the kind of thing that I would throw across the room and dismiss as part of the slut-shaming culture. Luckily, having already seen the film I knew that in actual fact the novel's message is very different. With her life falling apart around her, Delilah decides to hire her neighbour to track down all of the men that she has slept with and goes on a road trip in order to see if she can find 'the one'. Instead through a series of hilarious encounters what Delilah discovers is who she is and what she wants and realises that trying to define yourself in terms of the 'average' is always futile.

I have only one criticism to make. At the end of the novel when she is enjoying her happily ever after, Delilah receives a phone call from one of the men on the list of people that she has slept with who informs her that they did not in fact sleep together. This of course means that Colin (the hunky Irish neighbour) is her number twenty. I know that this could be seen as a reinforcement of the idea that your 'number' is meaningless and I wish that I could have read it that way. However, for me it just feels as though that message is undermined a little by Delilah after all staying within the number boundaries. It suggests that she was in fact able to find love because she met the statistics, whether her own or published in a magazine (as in the film). 

Overall, this book is a romp with a surprisingly serious, important point to make and in true romcom fashion has a happy ending too. Delilah's journey, both geographical and personal, is exactly the kind that every twentysomething friend of mine has dreamed they could make, me included!

Rating: ★★★