Woman Walks into a Bar (Quick Reads): Amazon.co.uk: Rowan Coleman: Books

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'A fantastic first novel' - Heat. 'Witty, entertaining and utterly compulsive' - Company. 'Growing Up Twice was a triumphant first novel and the follow-up is just as impressive' - OK! 'Touching and thought-provoking' - B"

Product Description
A Friday night out with the girls changes Sam's life forever ...28-year-old single mother Sam spends her days working in the local supermarket and her Friday nights out with her friends, Joy and Marie, letting her hair down at the White Horse. Life has never been easy for Sam, but she's always hoped that one day she'll meet The One. After a series of terrible dates with men she's met through an internet dating agency she's starting to lose heart - until her friends tell her they've set her up on a blind date. Sam's horrified but finally she agrees to go - after all you never know when you might meet the man of your dreams ...

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3 Reviews

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4 star:		(2)
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4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Could be Your Local, 19 Mar 2007

By	A Lover of Alessi "CAD" (Staffordshire UK) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Well written, especially for such a short chick flick read.

It does show that for all single lonely women out there, that there is hope (well light at the end of the tunnel) in matters of the heart. Yes, you might have to kiss a few frogs and toads (yes there are a lot of both out there), but there are also happy endings.

A book that is a hit for reading when time is short, but when still wanting to read well and not utter tat. (How often have you began to read a book only to find that it isn't quite what you thought it was about in the first place?).

All these quick reads are also great for taking on holidays, not bulky, shareable, and cheap. (More to spend on drinks at the bar or by the pool).

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly Good, 2 Jun 2006

By	D. E. Rattray (UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I say surprisingly because I've read so many crappy chicklit type books recently. This still has the chicklit mainstay- two-dimensional men: They're either tough/geeky or goodlooking/ugly or nice/nasty etc. But the main character, though passive, is deep and aspects of her past that have influenced her current personality are powerfully thought out and written which carried me through this fluent and enjoyable read. It was refreshing to find a challenging note in this flimsilly packaged book. Perhaps the main character was good enough, or real enough, to make the men feel more stereotyped. But the thread of this character was enough for me to tolerate the chicklit stuff and the extremely annoying daughter written so lovingly by someone with obvious maternal instincts.It's a tough old world out there if your a woman looking for Mr Right and the book does touch on (slightly) how a woman who's passive and backward is perhaps more vulnerable to the dark side of men-types. But a good, one-sitting read that I'd recommend.

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4.0 out of 5 stars It's fashion Nan, you must have had fashion when you were alive! (Warning - plot spoiler contained in this review), 30 Jun 2007

By	Deanne Dixon "deanne9499" (Sunny South Shields) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I remember when I sat my English Language GCSE (many moons ago), there was a creative writing section on the paper (presumably so those of us who don't revise for the parts you CAN prepare for can still pick up marks on the parts that you can't). I vaguely recall there being several different topics that you could write on - "Describe a memorable journey that you have been on", "Write about the last important decision you made and how it has affected you now", "Who is the person in your life who has influenced you the most, and why?" - that type of thing. The reason why I mention this is because when I read "Woman Walks into a Bar", I wondered whether Rowan had a similar exam question in mind - primarily, "Look back over the course of your life and pick out your most defining moment". This is, fundamentally, the premise of our author's shortest book to date.

Briefly, "28-year-old single mother Sam spends her days working in the local supermarket and her Friday nights out with her friends, Joy and Marie, letting her hair down at the White Horse. Life has never been easy for Sam, but she has always hoped that one day she'll meet The One. After a series of terrible dates with men she's met through an Internet dating agency she's starting to lose heart - until her friends tell her they've set her up on a blind date. Sam's horrified but finally she agrees to go - after all you never know when you might meet the man of your dreams".

Uniquely, I think how you rate this book is not dependent on the book itself, but on how quickly you, as a reader, get through it. Set up as a "short read", with the story taking place over the course of a single day (all the other relevant information is interwoven into the story-line), the temptation is to read this book in one sitting - preferably in under an hour. If you do this, I am certain that you will find the "un-put-downable" nature of the book refreshing and the "every woman" familiarity of Sam inspiring. The problem comes, however, if you start to slow down, to really question the story-line: too much attention to detail and the story-line will become predictable. Sadly for me, I over-analyse everything, and for that reason I noticed the little clues in the story-line that made me see the ending coming before Sam even met her blind date. Look closely - there are only three men actually mentioned in the book: Adam (Sam's ex-partner and father to her daughter, a man who beat her regularly), Luke (the person she lost her virginity to, who subsequently ignored and belittled her) and Brendan (the manager of her local pub on whom she has a secret crush). Right from the off-set we know that Adam will not be an "active" part of the story, with Joy categorically stating that he is NOT Sam's blind-date - "Sam, no! I would never, never do that, you know that". That just leaves Luke and Brendan - one to be her blind-date and one to be her knight in shining armour (anyone who is familiar to Rowan's work will know there is always a happy ending: anyone who is not, read the blurb!). The more obvious clue of Sam's true love comes in the identity of "John Smith" - the internet date who apparently stood her up. Presumbly Rowan is relying upon the fact that many women will be ignorant to the fact that "John Smith's" is an alcoholic drink: for those of us who do know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that Brendan being a bar-manager is no coincidence. If that in-joke passes you by, look out for the more subtle clue that "John Smith" will be drinking "half a lager" so Sam can identify him - then recall the line "Thanks for the drink Jan" (he called out to her) "I'll take half a lager with you". (Admittedly, I didn't notice this one the first time I read the book - presumably because, like Sam, I was so caught up in the notion that I wanted Brendan to be John Smith, I didn't actually realise that he was!). That just leaves Luke, whose role of blind-date is hinted at right at the beginning of the book, but is only confounded when we actually find out how he treated Sam after their not-so-secret rendez-vous in the park - keep your eyes open for Joy's line of "When are you going to realise that no-one can hurt you now? You are a strong, independent woman...?": presumably setting Sam up on a date with Luke was meant to prove that.

I am not suggesting that this book doesn't deserve five stars - it probably does. It's just that, for me, a regular Rowan reader, the "down-trodden, single mother comes good" theme is becoming a little predictable.

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	28% buy the item featured on this page: Woman Walks into a Bar (Quick Reads) 4.3 out of 5 stars (3)
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Woman Walks into a Bar (Quick Reads) (Paperback)

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