While this book is very different from the authors previous best seller "The Rosie Project" he has once again written a wonderful little gem. Great story from start to finish that I am certain will get rave reviews. Loved each character and for me the story was flawless. I will not hesitate to pick up his next works.

Having read The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect, I was keen to read Graeme Simsion's new book. It was very different although it still contained the same wry humour in places and it was also about love from the male viewpoint. However there the similarities ended. If you are expecting a novel in the vein of the Rosie Project this book is not for you!
Adam Sharp our eponymous hero has lived with Claire for 20 years in Norwich in a house inherited from her mother. Aged 49 he is an IT architect although his work seems to be sporadic. His childless marriage has become stale and his only excitement seems to be his weekly pub quiz outing. Claire is consumed with her company and its imminent sale to a US company. It looks like they could be heading in different directions.
One day a former Australian girlfriend, Angelina, contacts him via email and this rekindles the romance in his mind. He has always felt that this lost love was unfinished business. He had left Australia and Angelina when he still had feelings for her.
The book is written in the first person and once he receive's the catalyst email, the reader is told the full story of the young Adam's romance.
There are many music references in the book as Adam is also a piano player and singer. His meeting with Angelina in his twenties and their subsequent relationship occurs to the backdrop of 60s and 70s songs. In fact there is even a play list at the end of the novel.
The second part of the book is set in France when Adam reconnects with Angelina and her current husband Charlie. They stay in the family holiday home in a small village and there are several surprises that ensue before the conclusion of the book.
By about half way through the novel, in the french section, the novelty of the music backdrop had worn off and I did not find the plot as compelling as it could be. In fact I found some of this section quite muddled, particulary Adam's coversations with Angelina when they are trying to decide what to do. I was not sure that Charlie's behaviour was entirely believable either.
I quite enjoyed the book although I thought it lost its way a bit in the middle. The nostalgia aspect with the songs was unusual and I am tempted to follow the playlist now that I have finished reading it.. I liked some of Adam's sardonic comments and the humour they injected into the book.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for my advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book hooked me from the beginning. The music references and the characters kept me interested through the entire book. I read it in less than 24 hours. Very different from the Rosie books, but an excellent read!

The two Rosie books are some of my all-time favorite books so I was deliriously excited about this but . . . I gave up after 11% of it. It just didn't hold my attention.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

When I started this book I was kinda bored with it. I don't know what it was it just wasn't holding my attention. The only thing that prevented it from going to the did not finish pile was I got it from Netgalley and I truly do always try to finish those and the fact that I liked this author's previous fiction works.

However, the novel truly turned around once I had about 30% through or so, not quite sure exactly where it was. From there on I just wanted to read and read. I didn't fully connect with the characters emotionally but I liked the story and Graeme did an amazing job of explaining emotions and decision and showing he understands human emotions and reactions. So while I didn't feel for the characters I still felt....I truly know that that is how they felt, it was real, it was human, it was raw. I don't want to give away any details to the book mainly because everyone should make their own judgment. But we all have our own faults. This book was human.

The only reasons this was not a five star is because I doubt I would read it again. But I am not opposed to it and would recommend it.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, the author and publisher for granting my wish to read this book - see, wishes do come true!

First, this book isn't the Rosie books so if you're expecting that, you'll be disappointed. However, while it may be less laughs and a bit darker, it's still a great read - just a little more grown-up, mature read.

Just like Don from the Rosie books (and the author), Adam works in IT. While on an assignment in Australia, he has a passionate relationship with Angelina, a soap opera actress estranged from her husband. When he leaves Australia at the end of his contract, he feels that he lost his one true love.

Fast forward twenty-two years and Adam is in a long-term relationship with Claire. They have more of a business arrangement and less of a love story but they are making it work. Until an email comes from Angelina and their flirty banter leads him to think that he might have another chance with her. These thoughts reengage Adam to lose weight, get his career on track, even spice things up with Claire. Then an invitation from Angelina to spend a week with her and her husband in France comes - he throws everything to the wind to see if he can win back his love.

The ending redeemed this book for me - I was getting a little tired of some of the game playing midway. This is a must for any music lover - not a page goes by without a music reference and there's even a playlist in the back of the book.

Graeme Simison is showing another side of his writing with The Best of Adam Sharp - and bravo for that!

Another novel that heavily features music is The Best of Adam Sharp by Graeme Simsion. Graeme wrote the wonderful book, The Rosie Project. But if you expect this one to be anything like that, you’d be wrong. The Best of Adam Sharp center’s around Adam, a consultant who dabbles in playing the piano and singing. He’s married to Claire but can not forget the true love of his life, Angelina, who he met and fell in love with twenty years ago.

Out of the blue, Angelina reaches out to him and all those old feelings come flooding back. This book deals with relationships, past loves, maybe a little mid-life crisis, music of course, and about the road not taken.

I think many fans of The Rosie Project will enjoy this book but remember it’s nothing like that one at all!

Adam is at that stage in life when everything can change – but if he were to look back it was always thus. He's been treading water in his long-term relationship for many years, but it looks like she will move to America for career reasons, and he would stay in England and do his work – even if it is just something with computers, and contractual. All he seems to have is that, his hobby of pub quizzes (with a speciality on '60s and '70s music), and his past, which included a season working at the piano in a bar in Melbourne. But lo and behold, the biggest thing that can change in his life is he can enter a flashback – especially when the woman he was in love with at said bar gets in touch for the first time in a generation. She used to be a TV star, and married with it, but they had an affair. What kind of change will memories of that bring to bear on Adam?

I thought I was going to love this. Adam and I are quite different, but similar age at least. There is a hard-and-fast, non-apologetic love of certain styles and kinds of music, such as Nick Hornby might once have offered. There is the fact the author has put out a brace of hugely popular, and by all accounts hilarious, rom-coms-for-men, and this featured a manly man in awe of a womanly woman, so only promised more of the same. But boy, I really did struggle. And only a tiny fraction of that is down to he and I having polar opposite tastes in music.

The remnant of this being a rom-com, I think, is that Adam is patently a flawed man – a modern man, with his bullish approach to pub quizzes etc, but a flawed man. There are key times in his life here when the point of the narrative comes to the fore – that however blatantly obvious the right path to take is, Adam kicks his heels and just stares at the signpost. He has the opportunity more times than is fair, basically, to hop into bed with women, at the right or the wrong time for him, and takes none of them, and to slide in a much more measured way into a long-term relationship – again, he doesn't. The way he has it, if it's a decision that two people need to make then it should be the other person telling him it's been made for both of them.

Certainly that rings true of many men, and the potential woman reader of this will agree with my judgement there. But what they won't like is the second half of this book, which just doesn't ring true. It seems to be a bizarre fantasy, some heightened ticking-off from a wish-list, and I never believed it for one minute. Separate to its existence alone, it featured a major decision that Adam does take, and I read and reread it and never once found where and why he takes the choice – it's just to be accepted and dealt with that he has. That lack of nous as regards the character killed the book off for me, which had been mildly tolerable for certain long spells, but hardly featured real romance and never once really fell into the comedy bracket either. I think I laughed once, late on, but it was forgotten with the turning of the page. Before then the humour seems to come from how often Adam and the woman could go over the same private in-joke.

So is there a potential female reader of this? I wouldn't know the gender balance his previous books achieved, but I know they went down well with many blokes, for being honest-hearted depictions of their search for love. This is a misfire, however – Adam is a man who has the cake but needs someone else to feed him it, and in being presented in such a humourless way is just not good company. The Best of Adam Sharp? That may be – but I find it hard to believe this is the best of Graeme Simsion.