Love and a Dozen Roast Potatoes

One of the things about art, is that it simulates life. Every artistic expression represent real feelings and situations. Maybe that's the reason 'cause I enjoyed this book so much... because it's pure arte.

Simon Wan was an unknown author to me, and usually I go for the unknown. I enjoy the adventure, you know. The plot of this book is pretty original so, I was immediatly attracted.

It was an emotional ride through the character's life. The high and lows of his love experiences and how it affected him, even if he didn't notice it.

The clever humour and the pop culture references were on point, and I felt related with the fixation of the main character with Star Wars, lol.

If you're looking for something light, funny and touching, this book is for you. Enjoy it.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys comedy more than romance and first person writing styles. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for a honest review

I received this book as an ARC and I had high hopes... it was described as a kind of coming of age of a half Asian boy, a comic romance interlaced with disastrous relationships, always in search of true love. Other reviews were glowing and it seemed just the thing I'd want to read and rave about but, and this is a big but. I just couldn't bond with the book or the author. I felt that he missed so much of the personal stuff out - he started taking drugs but there was no real explanation of how it happened. One minute a cute schoolboy, charming the school dinner ladies, the next a stroppy teen experimenting with drugs. The same with girlfriends and sex - it all seemed a little impersonal. I'd have loved more discussion of real emotion - his parents split up but that was just said in passing..his mother got a new partner, again just mentioned. But that's just me, I suppose - nosey. It is, though, a good and fast paced read of a wild and somewhat rackety life and unless you are insatiably curious about real feelings and emotions and the WHY of what people do, you'll probably enjoy it

Not what I was expecting but a brilliant read !

Hmmm what to say about this book.
Some parts of it were funny when he was young but he went from young boy to drug taking man very quickly.
I had no idea what woman he was talking about most of the time or whereabouts in country or world he was. Little confusing and the whole book was written in little short sentences.
I found it very impersonal and I didn't particularly like him.
Whilst it wasn't a bad book it didn't do it for me.

I have mixed reviews with regards to this book, on the one hand I found it took me a little time to get used to the style of writing, whilst on the other there were some really funny moments that made it quite an enjoyable read. All in all I would say it was just above an average book and I have read a lot worse but then again I’ve also read better.

Nostalgia Is What It Used To Be


The old joke is that if everyone who says they were at Woodstock in 1969 had really been at Woodstock, there would have been 15 million people on Max Yasgur's farm that August weekend. I thought of that as I read this book and remembered all the things I did that I didn't really do and all of the experiences I had that I never actually had. But that's O.K., because Simon Wan did do everything important, remembers it, and tells us about it with charm, honesty and a certain ribald carelessness that brings it all back again.

Wan's story is a combination of madness, passion, recklessness, error, redemption, selfishness and hope. In short, all of the different lenses through which we look at our own pasts, our own loves and losses, and our own successes and failures. Simon takes you by the hand and by showing you the dignity and the foolishness of his own choices, maybe gives you a little insight into your own. Along the way he gives you a bit of a tour of the past three or so decades from his unique point of view.

And he does all of that with great and generous good-humor, which for me is enough right there. An entertaining and surprisingly engaging and well-sustained bit of late-night rueful and humorous confessional, with possibly a bit of exaggeration of the sin parts. (Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

This book is funny. Not like a little snigger funny, but a proper laugh funny. It's honest, it's rude, it's naughty and it's life! Simon Wan takes us on a candid one-man journey from his childhood to today, through a range of different emotions, as he seeks out true love (and a good few times he thinks he finds it along the way).
Some of the funniest anecdotes are those from his earlier years; the swinging on two legs of his chair at school to impress his multiple girlfriends; playing kiss-chase with the cutest girls as he first begins to discover love-type feelings; and narrowly avoiding a beating in a heated exchange of Chinese burns (one of the funniest scenes in the book).
But this book is also very real. Written in first person, I feel like I get to glimpse in on the adventurously lived life of an interesting man - someone in a band, on a journey with drugs, self-discovery in university, the realisation of 'adulting'. It's unusual to hear a man be so brutally honest on his tales of love lost, his heartbreak and anger, and his breaking hearts along the way. The only aspect of this book which I find quite hard to stomach is Wan's apparent 'detachment' from the relationships we read about - but this is possibly the passing of time and simply the male stance on relationships - something I don't hear as often as a woman! Wan isn't heartless, in fact his heart is very much on his sleeve, but his sometimes 'off the cuff' humour appears to be a way to lighten much more serious topics (pregnancies, lost loves, evictions...etc.)
There are some very funny stories, there are some stories to make you wince at their harsh realities (there's also a lot of 'sauce'!). The book is much longer than I thought it would be, but it sucks you in and you're suddenly half way through before you know it. Wan is a very relatable voice, very easy to read and very quotable, exploring a whole spectrum of emotions...
I won't spoil the ending for you, you'll have to go and buy it yourself!