LOVE BY THE BOOK
A laugh-out-loud debut novel that will delight fans of Bridget Jones’s Diary and HBO’s Girls.
Love by the Book charts a year in the life of Lauren Cunningham, a beautiful, intelligent, and unlucky-in-love twenty-eight-year-old American. Feeling old before her time, Lauren moves to London in search of the fab single life replete with sexy Englishmen. But why can’t she convince the men she’s seeing that she really isn’t after anything more serious than seriously good sex? Determined to break the curse, Lauren turns her love life into an experiment: each month she will follow a different dating guide until she discovers the science behind being a siren.
A laugh-out-loud debut novel that will delight fans of Bridget Jones’s Diary and HBO’s Girls.
Love by the Book charts a year in the life of Lauren Cunningham, a beautiful, intelligent, and unlucky-in-love twenty-eight-year-old American. Feeling old before her time, Lauren moves to London in search of the fab single life replete with sexy Englishmen. But why can’t she convince the men she’s seeing that she really isn’t after anything more serious than seriously good sex? Determined to break the curse, Lauren turns her love life into an experiment: each month she will follow a different dating guide until she discovers the science behind being a siren. Lauren will follow The Rules, she’ll play The Game, and along the way she’ll journal her (mis)adventures and maybe even find someone worth holding on to.
Witty, gritty, and very true to life, Love by the Book will have you in stitches.
- Penguin Books
- Paperback
- February 2015
- 336 Pages
- 9780143127284
Buy the Book
$16.00
About Melissa Pimentel
Melissa grew up in a small town in Massachusetts in a house without cable and therefore much of her childhood was spent watching 1970s British comedy on public television. At twenty-two, she made the move to London and has lived there happily for ten years, though has yet to get over the lack of creatively-flavoured Oreo cookies available on these shores.
Before meeting her fiance, she spent much of her time trawling the London dating scene for clean, non-sociopathic sexual partners and blogging about it, which became the inspiration for her first novel. These days, she spends much of her time reading in the various pubs of Stoke Newington and engaging in a long-standing emotional feud with their disgruntled cat, Welles. She works in publishing.
Praise
“For fans of Sex and the City, Pimentel offers a fictionalized account of a real-life experiment
in dating.” —Kirkus Reviews
“This is lots of fun. . . . Honest, funny, and cringingly relatable.” —Glamour (U.K.)
“Melissa Pimentel’s voice is wickedly funny and entirely appealing. Reading Love by the Book
is like taking a tour of London on the arm of an audacious and hilarious new friend—in
other words, a whole lot of fun!”
—Meg Donohue, USA Today bestselling author of All the Summer Girls
“Wincingly honest and hilariously perceptive, Love by the Book is a fresh, funny, clever take
on dating, relating and finding love.”
—Anna Maxted, bestselling author of Getting Over It and Running in Heels
Discussion Questions
Did any of the dating guides Lauren consulted seem appealing and if so, why?
What do you think of the idea of a dating guide, in general? Is it possible to give universal advice when it comes to affairs of the heart, and if so, why?
What did you make of the other relationships in the book—Tristan and Lucy, Meghan and her wife, Lauren’s parents, Cathryn and her fiancé?
Would you say there was some common thread of success between these partnerships? A common thread of conflict?
How did each new approach change the type of person Lauren attracted? Do you ever find yourself changing your behavior to encourage or repel different types of people?
Lauren’s dating life consists of a pretty health combination of extreme joy and profound loneliness. Is there a benefit to the loneliness, and if so, how does it affect the moments
of joy?
What is Lauren’s attitude toward casual sex, and how does she evaluate it through the lens of each guide? Do you think our culture’s approach to this has changed recently and if so what is responsible for that change?
What is the relationship between love and sex in a romantic partnership, and can you have one without the other?
Given Lauren’s love of literature, did you find that any of her romantic partners had similarities to well-known fictional characters? If so, which ones?
If you had to choose one of Lauren’s partners for dinner, a movie, and drinks, who would it be and why?
Do you think Lauren’s story would be different if it was set in New York City? San Francisco? Cleveland? Or is a book about dating messy and terrible and wonderful no matter where
it’s set?