Author: Belinda Jones
ISBN: 978-034-099-4443
RRP: $22.99
Best friends Carmen and Beth are desperate to break free from their mundane lives in dreary London. Carmen has only just escaped a bad relationship and Beth is beginning to realise that any chance of achieving her dream of becoming a famous dancer is fading, fast.
So when Beth suggests the ultimate escape – dancing their way through three different countries, all major dance capitals, on a new reality TV show – Carmen can’t resist! As they travel across the globe learning the smouldering and sorrowful tango in Argentina, the feisty flamenco in Spain and the spirited salsa in Cuba they partner with some seriously sexy gauchos, matadors and dirty dancers, but are the girls ready to finally fall in love?
Belinda Jones’s Living la Vida Loca is a fun and entertaining novel filled with seductive dance moves, flirtatious dance partners, Mojitos, and amazing exotic locations which will make you want to jump on the next plane and fly across the world!
What I loved most about the novel is the full and vivid descriptions of each location. You can really picture the exotic places, feel the textures of the gorgeous dresses, and hear the vivacious music. It draws the reader into the world of the novel. At first I did find this book a bit hard to get into, but once Carmen and Beth left London and began travelling I was hooked! The way that each location was described was so well done that I really felt as if I was travelling with Carmen, Beth and the rest of the TV crew, and experiencing everything that they were. This novel is pure escapism.
Carmen and Beth are two women that you really warm to. Interesting and engaging, they aren’t your typical characters; both of them have flaws. I found myself really cheering them on and hoping that the emotional journey that each of them went on throughout the novel gave them both the happy ending that they were searching for.
Carmen and Beth’s strong friendship is endearing and the hilarious situations that the girls find themselves in are so down to earth that you can really imagine yourself getting into them if you were in their shoes, and serve to make the reader like the girls even more. There were also quite a few laugh out loud funny moments in the novel.
An almost perfect chick lit tale of friendship, romance and self-discovery, Living la Vida Loca is a light hearted, easy to read novel just made to be read while sun baking at the beach this summer.
Whether you love dancing as an activity or just watching it on TV from the comfort of your couch, it will inspire a desire to dance in everyone! I know that it definitely did for me. I’m desperate to start taking salsa classes! In this case, you can definitely judge a book by its cover; Living la Vida Loca is as lovely as its gorgeously sparkly pink cover!
I haven’t read any of Jones’s other novels, but after reading this I’m definitely eager to read more of them! I also have to wonder if this book will be followed by a second, as the ending was somewhat abrupt, and left an opening for a sequel…
