Alli's CBR-III Review #41 - What's Your Number

While cruising my local library I saw this book on the selected picks shelf. I remember reading a review of the movie and since I heard it was very awful, I was surprised that it was a book first. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised though, I guess there are lots of terrible books as well. This book wasn't supremely terrible, but it was predictable and a bit ridiculous. Sometimes the ridiculousness was fun, and overall it was a decent, quick read. It was a bit like baby food or mac and cheese.

The premise however I find a bit interesting, our protagonist Dehilah hunts down all the men on her “list” to see if any of them could be the one that got away. The reason that she is hunting down the men is because she read an article that states that the average number of sexual partners for women is 10.5, and she herself has just hit #20. She feels like a tramp and so she vows not to sleep with any more men, so she drives around the country and stalks all her exes and one night stands to try and rekindle something with one of them. I don’t believe in “the one” and I also think that it is irrelevant how many partners a woman has as long as she was consenting to all of them. But I will admit that as I was reading, my thoughts did drift to the men on my list, and what it would be like to see them again. I suppose that is the appeal of this story.

In addition to the self admittedly crazy antics of Delilah, she is also flirting with her neighbour who is helping her track the men down and getting ready for her sister’s wedding. She also buys a dog along the way and sneaks it into hotels and so forth. Everyone in her family thinks that Delilah is jealous of her sister getting married, and even though she doesn’t admit it, she really must be to go through all this trouble to find a man to settle down with. It is a bit “Bridget Jones” down to the ending where she runs out into the street with no pants on (although I am not sure if that was in the book or just the movie).

If you read this, you will probably figure out the ending pretty much right from the get go, there are no real surprises anywhere along the way. But it is a fairly cute book, if shallow and a bit sexist.