#BookReview #BlogTour Oh I do Like to be by Marie Phillips

Thanks so much to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for allowing to be part of the blog tour for the brilliant Oh I do Like to be by Marie Phillips:)

Amazon buy link

KEYNOTE

A reworking of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, from the author of the international bestseller Gods Behaving Badly

PRAISE
‘Funny, super-smart, clever and ridiculous’ Richard Osman

DESCRIPTION

Shakespeare clone and would-be playwright Billy has just arrived in an English seaside town with his sister Sally, who was cloned from a hair found on the back of a bus seat. All Billy wants is a cheap B&B, an ice cream and a huge hit in the West End. Little does he know that their fellow clones Bill and Sal are also residents of this town. Things are about to get confusing – cue professional rivalry, marital discord and a family reunion like no other.

This modern update of The Comedy of Errors is what you get when Gods Behaving Badly author Marie Phillips decides to write an important, scholarly work about the life of William Shakespeare, reads the complete works, including the long poems nobody likes, and then decides to turn it into a witty, delightful romp that you can probably finish reading in an afternoon with two tea breaks.

SALES POINTS

Marie’s first novel, Gods Behaving Badly (2007), has sold over 40,000 copies worldwide.

Her second novel, The Table of Less Valued Knights (2015), was longlisted for the Baileys Prize.

A raucous, irreverent spin on the recent spate of Shakespeare reinterpretations: Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed, Howard Jacobson’s My Name is Shylock, Jeanette Winterson’s The Gap of Time, Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl.

PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS WORKS

For Gods Behaving Badly:

‘Ingeniously imagined and satisfyingly lusty’ Guardian
‘What makes the novel stand out – and it really does stand out – is its originality and lightness

of touch’ Daily Telegraph
‘Very, very funny … This book charms and provokes in a paragraph’ Bettany Hughes, The

Times

For The Table of Less Valued Knights:

‘As if Jane Austen were rewriting Terry Pratchett: snorts and chortles plus elegant eyebrow- raising … Bold literary and historical misadventures, told with a twist and a lightness of touch’Ian Sansom, Guardian

 Review: I have to admit, this is a book that really came at the right time, a time when I was heading, kicking and screaming into a mother of a reading slump, with a backlog that needed to be delved into. I have to admit I wasn’t sure it was me but within the first few pages I was hooked, as I read the story of Billy and his sister Sally. You hear the word ‘clone’ and you accept it will be a kooky kind of book, but nothing prepared me for the mayhem and mix ups that totally hit the spot as my kind of humour. The phrase laugh out loud was pretty much coined for this!

The romance was actually very lovely too, and I pretty much smiled, nodded and gasped throughout. I loved that you got the full smack of desperation from the lead, a character who can’t believe that he hasn’t been able to put out a play and then you feel his shock as he meets someone who has lived their life doing just this and not only that-they’re him! So it could have been him, should have been him and all in between, but the thing is, the cosmos has plans for not only them, but his sister, who was also cloned. The characters in this were brilliant and I shook my head at their mother, who was really something! Very much recommended and thanks so much to Anne Cater for the book in return for an honest review.

About the author

Marie Phillips is the author of the international bestseller Gods Behaving Badly and The Table of Less Valued Knights, which was longlisted for the Baileys Prize. With Robert Hudson, she wrote the BBC Radio 4 series Warhorses of Letters and Some Hay in a Manger. Under the name Vanessa Parody, she co-wrote Fifty Shelves of Grey, a spoof of Fifty Shades of Grey.

And now, how about you follow the blog tour?!