Book Review: How To Fail At Flirting - Moonraker

Denise Williams

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

published: 1st December 2020spoilers? vague ones

Goodreads

One daring to-do list and a crash course in flirtation turn a Type A overachiever’s world upside down.

When her flailing department lands on the university’s chopping block, Professor Naya Turner’s friends convince her to shed her frumpy cardigan for an evening on the town. For one night her focus will stray from her demanding job and she’ll tackle a new kind of to-do list. When she meets a charming stranger in town on business, he presents the perfect opportunity to check off the items on her list. Let the guy buy her a drink. Check. Try something new. Check. A no-strings-attached hookup. Check…almost.

Jake makes her laugh and challenges Naya to rebuild her confidence, which was left toppled by her abusive ex-boyfriend. Soon she’s flirting with the chance at a more serious romantic relationship—except nothing can be that easy. The complicated strings around her dating Jake might destroy her career.

Naya has two options. She can protect her professional reputation and return to her old life or she can flirt with the unknown and stay with the person who makes her feel like she’s finally living again.

Galley provided by publisher

CWs: past abuse (inc. scenes of physical abuse), attempted rape (ch. 41), stalking, revenge porn

How to Fail at Flirting is, for me, a book of two halves. One, the romance between Naya and Jake, which I loved. And two, the storyline regarding Naya’s abuse, which, I don’t want to say I hated, but I definitely did not like.

Firstly, if you’re going to read this, please be aware that the storyline regarding Naya’s past abusive relationship is a good sight more graphic than the blurb — and many reviews — have noted. There are scenes of physical abuse, stalking, threats of revenge porn, and it all culminates in an attempted rape in chapter 41. I’m warning you not just because it’s important to, but I do feel not knowing these things happened really impacted my enjoyment of the book.

So a little rundown of the plot: Naya has been out of an abusive relationship (the breakup of which also affected her working life too) for a while now, but still is reluctant to get back to dating. So her friends write her a to-do list, which involves such items as “let a man buy you a drink” and “have a one-night stand”. When she is stood-up by those friends on a night out, she meets Jake, who, being in town for only a few days, seems the perfect opportunity. But Naya and Jake click, and click well, and it becomes longer than a one-night, or even two-night, stand. In the meantime, Naya’s ex has returned to her workplace and is busy threatening her with revenge porn.

Let me start with what I loved, and that’s Naya and Jake. Everything about them was fun, particularly their dynamic, with the bad jokes and how much they enjoyed each other’s company. They were by far and away the best part of the book, and a major reason that I could still enjoy it, despite not liking other aspects of the plot. I think they are the reason I will likely end up reading any other books Denise Williams writes.

However, and it’s a pretty big however, as much as I liked Naya and Jake and the romance, I just found myself always on edge that something awful was going to happen with regard to the abuse storyline. I think part of that was a lack of forewarning, but another part was the type of abuse there was and the scenes of it. It’s all very well saying “abusive relationship” in your content warnings, but that doesn’t say a whole lot useful, which is what I found when, within the first few chapters, there was a scene of physical abuse. I have read books which include abusive relationships — somewhat graphically too — that I haven’t been forewarned about and enjoyed them, but I think the main part was those involved emotionally abusive relationships, not physically and verbally so. And I, for whatever reason, have an easier time of reading about that.

There’s also the fact that Naya’s abuser is pretty prevalent in this book. He comes back and somehow gets her number, so he’s always there as a kind of shadow over everything in the plot. Which cranks up how on edge I am, because of course he’s going to do something awful. In fact, the easiest time I had reading this book was during/after the awful event, because it had happened so now I could relax some.

That event, an attempted rape, I also didn’t like because it acted as the catalyst for Naya and Jake to start talking again after their argument (which I felt was kind of…stupid I guess? I mean, understandable from Naya’s POV because we know about the abuse. So, her hurting Jake made sense. Jake hurting her back how he did…did not, for me, in the context of his character. And also I’m not sure I could forgive someone saying what he did, but okay Naya. If you can… But anyway). And really, that was its most significant role in the plot. Yes, it got Davis taken down, but I feel like you could work out a way to do that without subjecting your main character to a sexual assault. I don’t quite know how to articulate why I didn’t like that being its role — possibly because it’s traumatic. Again, why would you subject your character to that, when you could have them talk it through, have her apologise and explain everything (at one point, I did worry she wouldn’t apologise at all which would have been disappointing. Just because you had what you saw as a reasonable reason for hurting someone, doesn’t mean you are absolved of it… But she did apologise, sort of). I don’t know if that explains why it didn’t sit well with me, but yeah.

With all that in mind, I did still like the book overall. The good parts were good enough to offset the less-good parts, and I do think if I knew all that was coming, I might enjoy it yet more. But as it was, it was only a 3 star read for me.

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