Description: What do you get when you cross a music snob, a football fan, a star-gazer and a tragi-romantic loser-in-love? You get Howie!

Verdict: Howie lives with his brother, Ben, who has autism. Ben is funny and utterly lovable. More than anything, Ben wants a girlfriend.

So when the TV show Love is Mental (a dating show for people with disabilities) is aired, Ben decides to participate. And this is where life starts to unhinge for Howie.

You see, Howie wants romance too. So when he falls for one of Ben’s dates, it sets him off on a rollicking journey into deception that will ultimately reveal to him that he is much more like Ben than he could ever have imagined.

In this debut novel from C.C. Howard, and one which runs at a tasty 177 pages, well, firstly, I love that one of my all-time favorite musicians Richard Jobson (The Skids) is quoted as saying that the warmth of the book wraps itself around you like the best Hornby or Doyle and that he was hooked with all the music, football, love and kindness!

I mean, seriously, just that kudos alone is a massive go-to for me having read this new novel and I hope will also be for everyone else out there a fan of Jobson and his works.

But, and getting smartly back on track, So Very Mental as a whole, as a sit down, get comfy and read entity is one of those books where you become engaged with the characters from the off, in their individual and collective humor and thus find it hard to break away from (hence the ease of a two-day binge read through these 177 pages).

Cleverly and oh-so incisively written, So Very Mental: A Novel is told in three parts, three chapters if you will, and thus the story line is brought forth with near perfect timing from start to finish.

In conclusion, So Very Mental is a warm, quirky and inclusive story, and one which shows us that when it comes to this crazy thing we call life, we’re all in it together.

About the Author - C.C. Howard grew up on the sunny beaches of Australia. After several years of travel he landed in Stockholm, Sweden, where he now resides with his family. He works as a creative film-exec and teacher, and has a passion for film, music, football and books.

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