Estella de la Croix (Stella) is seriously wondering whether she will ever have sex again! Twice divorced and single mother to the twinkly and adorable toddler, Honey, Stella is a red-hot, half-French sex-(time)bomb, desperately looking for someone with whom she can safely detonate! And being the maturer side of thirty (as opposed to the more immature!), anything goes!
Stella's unorthodox search for someone to scratch her increasing libidinous itch (which in itself include a strange but open account of recreational drug use and the consumption of vast quantities of alcohol) leads to an ill-advised forray between the black satin sheets of an elderly plastic surgeon, so permatanned is he, that he may very well have been Tangoed (not only but also, he is the perpetrator of some seriously buttock-clenching chat up lines that will make you roll about with glee) and later to a liaison with a "World's-Oldest-Teenager" DJ, closer to forty than she is, but more firmly in denial.
The meanderings of the plot are a distraction from the basic humour - surely it should be the other way around? Nevertheless, I bought this book because I loved My Life On A Plate (which had basically no plot at all, but was hurtingly funny and made me cry with laughter, once more on a packed commuter train) and I hoped that Don't You Want Me would be as funny. I was not disappointed.
Stella's rant through gritted teeth as she listens through the walls, once more, to her Lothario lodger (Frank, the ginger-haired artist) getting it on with what surely must be a howler monkey, had me bent double with mirth.
I enjoyed the "story", more so the characters (Stella's father is Great, with a capital "G") and even more so the humour. The chapters that include the Politically Correct nursery "Happy Bunnies" may, whilst reading, require the use of an oxygen tent.
Does our heroine find the Studly Dudley of her dreams? Well if I tell you that, there's really no point in buying it.
Once more and in the same vein as My Life On A Plate, India Knight manages to extract the Michael in a way that we can all relate to; even if the majority of single-mothers who might read this book aren't independently wealthy, swathed in cashmere, living in an airy house in Primrose Hill and able to afford the luxury of lying in bed with a killer hangover whilst the "staff" look after the baby.
If you ask me to sum it up, I would have to say that I love nothing more than an overdose of clever wit, and India Knight provides it in spades.