20 Times A Lady (What’s Your Number?)
I picked up this book after watching the movie adaptation, “What’s Your Number?”, starring Anna Faris and Chris Evans. I am going to start off with a look at the movie, then discuss the book and the changes made from the original source material.
What’s Your Number?
The main character is Delilah Darling, played by Anna Faris. She is in her late 20s and a bit promiscuous. She reads an article in a magazine that the average number of men that women had slept with was 10.5. When she starts comparing her number, 19, with other girls, she comes to the realization that her number is high. Determined not to sleep with any more men until she finds “the one”, she sets her maximum number to 20. Unfortunately, she gets drunk and sleeps with her disgusting boss who had just fired her. Now that she’s reached her number, she is determined to seek out her exes in order to see if one of them will be the man she is meant to be with.
She gets the inspiration from her sister who became engaged to her old high school boyfriend after running into him at a high school reunion. With the help of her neighbour Colin, she tracks them all down and discovers that none of them are worth her time, except one.
Colin manages to track down Delilah’s first boyfriend, Jake Adams. He and Delilah hit it off again and Delilah thinks that things are really working out. Over time, she quickly realizes that while he is the ideal man, he isn’t the man for her. While they were working together, she fell in love with her neighbour, Colin. She tracks him down at another wedding and tells him how she feels.
This is your typical rom-com, chick-flick movie. It is a decent movie but nowhere near the best. If you enjoy romantic comedies, check this one out on Netflix. If not, I would steer clear of it.
20 Times A Lady
Though the book was written first, I am discussing the book after talking about the movie because that was how I was introduced to. The book also follows Delilah Darling, but a lot of the other characters are different than the movie version. Her neighbour, Colin, is an Irish actor whose dad is a private investigator. Daisy’s fiancé is a black Jewish man who she met somewhere instead of her high school sweetheart. Her dad is dead and it’s her grandfather who has the returned romantic connection. The story is essentially the same as the book, with only a few deviations. The story was reworked and cut down for the film adaptation. I think that this actually helped the movie in this case.
Delilah, with the help of Colin, travels across the country in a Ford Focus, tracking down all of her ex-boyfriends. The one “good catch” ends up being a cheating jerk who just got out of prison.
While Delilah does end up with Colin, it didn’t feel as satisfying as the movie. Delilah wasn’t the one who tracked Colin down. Colin was the one who made the grand gesture. I prefer the movie ending with this story.
Both the movie and the book are just kind of average. I think they are both for people who specifically like these types of stories. They are entertaining but nothing too spectacular. I wouldn’t put either of these on my must-watch or must-read lists, but I did enjoy them both for what they were.