A Second Rainbow

Funny, quite sexy, a little shocking, the second-timer must-read!

Single again, and starting over?

A second shot is what you make it, but any mature woman re-entering the dating game on a free-for-all website should be issued with a manual. Peter Pans who have dodged commitment for a lifetime, pathological liars, malignant narcissists, control freaks driven by their anxieties - any or all could be in your starter pack. The mature Mr Perfect doesn’t exist. The faster you realize that, and learn where to compromise and where not, the better, but Dorothy was more naïve than most. From being a woman who had eyed computers from a cautious distance and likens her first orgasm to a rainbow, to someone who collects bizarre companions through the website and whose best friend is a man she only knows online, Dorothy turns from subdued caterpillar into confident butterfly in ways she never suspected possible. There’s love, tears, self-doubt, sex and bitchery in the world of the second-timers, where inhibitions are the one bit of baggage they do relinquish.

Perfect Simon turns out to be a serial cheat with abandonment issues, Tim will say and do anything to get sex, Leo has anxieties no-one would guess from his confident exterior, and Eric sees lying as no problem whatsoever. To be fair, they’re staunchly there for Dorothy when things go horribly wrong, but they’re no-one’s idea of Mr Right. Somewhere along the way, though, there might be a Mr Will Do Nicely?

There's a thread through the book linking it to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum's 1900 classic first book. Copyright for the rest belongs to EJ Lamprey, writing as Clarissa Rodgers-Briskleigh