Blurb
A couple of glasses of bubbly with the girls at a charity do and Poppy’s life has gone into meltdown. Not only has she lost her engagement ring, but in the panic that followed, she’s lost her phone too. As she paces shakily around the hotel foyer she spots an abandoned phone in a bin. Finders keepers! Now she can leave a number with the hotel staff. It was meant to be!
Except the phone’s owner, businessman Sam Roxton, doesn’t agree. He wants his phone back, and he doesn’t appreciate Poppy reading all his messages and wading into his personal life. As Poppy juggles wedding preparations, phone messages and hiding her left hand from Magnus and his parents, can things get any more tangled?
Review
I was lucky enough to win a signed copy of this book on Twitter. I don't often win things but, of the few things I have won, this has definitely been my favourite. I've only read two of Kinsella's previous novels and I couldn't put them down once I'd started. This was no different.
There's something about Kinsella's writing style that draws you in and keeps you hooked. Maybe it's because it's so relaxed, or maybe it's because you don't have to Google every other word to know what it means - either way, I love it.
This book had me cringing, laughing and, towards the end, shedding the occasional tear. It's credit to Sophie Kinsella that, despite the overall plot being fairly obvious, there's still a few twists in there that keep you entertained. In fact, it's fair to say that even knowing the ending before you read it doesn't change your opinion of the book as a whole. Like I said, I even cried at the end.
That being said, the whole book screamed 'Bridget Jones' to me. The main narrative is a young, female character who, rather clumsily, misplaces her engagement ring days before her fiance's parents are due to fly in. She's then made to feel, albeit unintentionally, as though she's not good enough for her fiance and begins to doubt it herself. Then she meets a man who changes all of that and they fall in love. Maybe it's just me that can see the slight comparisons to Bridget Jones, who knows?
I initially started reading the book as light reading in the bath but when my baths began to take even longer than usual, I knew Kinsella had done it again. I wasn't going to be able to put the book down until I'd finished... And I didn't.
There's parts in the book that hit me quite hard. Just as with the main character, Poppy, my mum died when I was fairly young and I refused to talk about it until I met someone who understood (although not quite in the same way as the novel). I also hate confrontation and letting people know how something really makes me feel - just like her. Maybe it's these similarities between myself and the main character that captured my attention so fully, I don't really know. What I do know, however, is that I'm desperately hoping Kinsella brings out a part 2. I want to know exactly what happened after!