Book Review: Charlotte Street by Danny Wallace

Charlotte Street by Danny Wallace
Publisher: William Morrow
Released in 2012
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:
It’s all about a man who one night helps a girl. Just for a second. And there’s a moment between them. But then it’s over. She disappears. But in his hands, he realizes he’s still got something of hers…
Her disposable camera. So what should he do? Develop the film? Or forget about her? He develops the film. Of course he does. And he looks at her photos. And that’s when he spots something very unusual indeed…

Charlotte Street is a British romantic comedy along the same lines as a Nick Hornby novel. Jason Priestly (not that Jason Priestly) has recently quit his job as a school teacher to become a journalist. He’s ended up writing reviews for a free paper that’s handed out at the train station – not exactly where he wants to be. If that’s not disappointing enough, he finds out through Facebook that his recently ex-girlfriend is engaged.

One day, he sees a girl on the street struggling with her packages. Jason doesn’t notice until she’s riding away in a cab that she’s dropped her disposable camera. His friend Dev convinces him to go on a quest to find the mystery girl – she might be the girl of Jason’s dreams.

Oh, how I love dry British wit. There’s no shortage of it in Charlotte Street. Jason’s friend Dev is the best. He is so clueless and funny without realizing it. A couple of the situations were a little too much on the side of screwball comedy, which I do not care for, but most of the book was just really funny. If this book were a movie, a young Hugh Grant would play Jason. The book has been optioned by Working Title Films but I couldn’t find any information on whether it will actually be made into a movie. I hope it is.

I really enjoyed Danny Wallace’s sense of humor and plan to read more of his books.

(I received a complementary review copy of this book.)