Title: Third Wheel
Author: Nick Spalding
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary
First published: August 30th 2022
Publisher: Amazon Publishing UK
Finished reading: July 24th 2022
Pages: 304

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Amazon Publishing UK in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

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There was just something aboutĀ Third WheelĀ that had me intrigued immediately. Between the fun cover and blurb I was looking forward to what sounded like a hilarious social media focused story, and I fully expected to have a great time with it. Sadly the complete opposite happened, and I ended up struggling considerably with this story… Up until the point I started to wonder whether I should simply DNF it. Oh yes, there is no doubt that this story and me weren’t a right fit after all.

First of all I do still like the sound of the premise with the social media angle and the two best friends having an influencer channel together. This is a great backdrop for the story and it’s an easy way to introduce funny moments in the plot. The whole ‘third wheel’ element I could live with, mostly because it’s NOT a love triangle, but just the best friend being pushed in the background by the new girlfriend. I think the idea behind Third WheelĀ was great, but unfortunately the execution was rather lacking. That, or at least it ended up clashing horribly with me…

My first major issue is the fact that I couldn’t stand any of the main characters. They are supposed to be best friends, but they don’t really treat each other that way and Sy mainly just walks all over Jack (and that is even before the girlfriend comes in). I felt like their interaction was both forced, repetitive and highly frustrating, and it soon became a chore to have to deal with all that. Especially with all the swearing going on and the humor not being for me at all; it felt like the story was trying too hard to be funny and it all fell rather flat for me. I don’t mind a bit of crude humor, but in this case it just didn’t work.

The plot itself didn’t really do it for me either, as there were a lot of cliches involved and too many repetitive and surprisingly dull dialogues. It turned out to be quite a disappointing read, and not at all the experience I hoped I would have with Third Wheel. Please note that this is one of those books where your experience can be completely different depending on how you react to the characters, humor, writing style and tone, so don’t give up on my account if you like the sound of the story.

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