by Siviwe Zibi
Sarah Tucker is an award-winning travel journalist, broadcaster and author. She is a former presenter of BBC Holiday programme. She has worked as a travel writer for Guardian and The Times. She has also presented award-winning documentaries for
the Discovery Channel. Sarah lives in the United Kingdom and France with her son Thomas Tucker.
The Last Year of Being Single is her intensely, honest, wickedly funny and sexy debut novel. Sarah is a single mom. She met the man of her wet dreams, John Wayne, the dark prince with deep black-brown eyes and his brows meet in the middle, which means, according to all Cosmopolitan articles, he is not to be trusted. He has a strong masculine body. Sarah was assigned to interview John about how newly privatised Rogerson Railways is supposed to communicate with its customers, John was a regional director of Rogerson Railways. During the interview, John offered to buy Sarah lunch and she agreed. They started flirting and when they were done with the interview Sarah went home.
Sarah had a flatmate called Karen; she was a nanny to a four-year-old boy. Sarah told Karen about the man she met during the day, Karen said to her “what about your current boyfriend Paul O’Brain.” Paul was working for the bank and he was two years younger than Sarah, very sensible, good with money and attractive. Sarah’s friends didn’t like him because he was controlling and insecure and potential bully.
According to Sarah’s friends, he didn’t have va-va-voom. She has been dating with Paul for five years. A week later Sarah found out that she was twelve weeks pregnant, she was caught in the middle whether she would continue dating Paul or start a new relationship with John. She told Paul that she is pregnant. Paul said she must do abortion because of his religion and he was scared of his parents, they didn’t know that he had a girlfriend.
Sarah agreed to do an abortion and after that, she was feeling guilty for what they have done with Paul. Sarah met with John again and now they were officially dating, she betrayed Paul yes she did. Sarah had fun with John they would go for a vacation and lied to Paul she said she was attending a business seminar. She got pregnant again and she was puzzled, she was not sure who the father of the baby was as she was dating Paul and John. They both proposed to her on different occasions, she ended up not getting married to none of them because she was not sure which one to marry between them.
Sarah was an inconclusive character in this book she was an indulgent person. She confesses to loving Paul but that was not convincing because she cheated on him. If Sarah was honest we wouldn’t have this book, she was trapped in lies, she couldn’t figure out what to do. It took her up to 282 pages to make the decision by breaking up with Paul and John same time. This book is written in the form of a diary and she used choppy writing style. I did like this book it made me be inquisitive about Sarah’s choice, the ending was fairly interesting.
