Take A Chance On Me by Jill Mansell
Contemporary Romance
October 1, 2010
Paperback, 432 Pages
Sourcebooks Landmark

Reviewed by Tori

Favorite Quote:”You’re not suppose to enjoy funerals. Next you’ll be giving it 5 stars on Amazon.”

Living in a small town, Cleo has learned to accept the fact that there are just certain people you can never avoid no matter how hard you really, really want to. When her job throws her in constant contact with her childhood nemesis, Johnny La Venture, she’s perfectly content to be civil while plotting his death scenarios in her head. But for someone she is trying to avoid, he is becoming harder and harder to ignore.

Take A Chance On Me revolves primarily on Cleo. Cleo is dating the man of her dreams-only to find out he is married with 2 kids. Of course, she finds all this out in front of her sworn mortal enemy-Johnny LaVenture. Johnny and Cleo have been nemeses since grade school. As she hasn’t seen him in years, it’s only fitting he shows up to witness her most humiliating moment.

The story progresses as Cleo tries to get on with her life and avoid Johnny-only to find he keeps popping up where ever she is. Throw in her ex boyfriend’s soon to be ex wife, her best friend’s unrequited love, and her sister’s sudden shock when an 18 year old girl shows up claiming to be her husband’s unknown child and you have a mad cap hilarious story that have you laughing the whole time.

Jill Mansell is a master of light hearted romantic contemporaries that uses dry humor, endearing characters, and crazy romantic plots to write enjoyable stories you won’t want to put down. Her characters are delightfully flawed and provide a realism that has you thinking, “I know someone like that.” The storyline is relatively simple and with a fast paced enjoyable conversational writing style. It does switch to different POV’s but I found that it adds a tete-a-tete feel to the book.

Cleo is hilarious with her calm outside manner and her raging inner monologue. A pretty 20 something woman, she just wants to be loved. Unfortunately, life keeps getting in her way. Strong and self reliant; she has a vulnerable side she hides well. That is until the one person who has always made her doubt herself won’t go away. Johnny is an enigma. Even though we are told of his cruelty to Cleo when they were young, you see none of that now. A happy go lucky fellow, he instigates himself into Cleo’s life with an aplomb and cheerfully annoys & tantalizes her.

There are actually 3 story lines here that intertwine; new love, old love, and a second chance at love. Each one is given equal time with no sacrifices to the others. The love scenes are off page but the stories are strong enough without them.

The secondary characters add delish snarkiness and humor as they all scramble to find and keep love in a small village where everyone knows everyone’s business. While there are some characters you will love to smack, it says much about Jill Mansell’s ability as a writer to imbibe these characters with enough personality to make them matter to me in the end.

At times I found the endless misunderstandings to be tedious. It’s hard when you see what needs to be done and the characters won’t cooperate with you.

All in all, Take A Chance On Me is a delightful contemporary romp that explores love, friendship, and second chances in an engaging delightful tale.

Rating: 4/5

Recent Reviews:
Book Addict – 3.5/5
Goodreads

Jill Mansell’s Website