Review: I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

I've Got Your Number: Poppy Wyatt is recently engaged to the very cerebral Magnus and is over the moon. In many ways, she is the perfect balance to his studious, staid persona which has been cultivated within his family of “great minds”. Magnus plays Scrabble with his parents and brother while they each discuss their latest published journal article analyzing the latest in philosophical thought. By contrast, Poppy, although a dedicated physiotherapist, is not writing papers likely to be published in a peer reviewed journal. Rather than reviewing the merits of new approaches to critical thinking, Poppy discusses the minutiae of her day via text with her closest girlfriends – often punctuated by smiley faces :). When Poppy loses the engagement ring which has been in Magnus’s family for generations, she panics about how he and his stuffy family will react and imagines it will just be one more strike against her with his family. So . . . she is desperate to fix this at all costs – and the spiral of compromising positions begins . . .

Poppy is frantic when she loses her engagement ring and immediately connects via her lifeline, her phone, to ask for her friends’ help in finding it. She also alerts the hotel in which she believes she has lost the ring that they must reach her on her phone as soon as they locate the missing ring. When she is unexpectedly separated from her phone, she anxiously picks one up that seems to have been abandoned by someone. That someone was personal assistant to strategic consultant Sam Roxton and when Poppy tells him about her plight he reluctantly agrees to allow her to keep the phone. In exchange, he asks her to manage a few of his messages until his new assistant is on board. I am sure you can imagine the mix-ups that ensue when Poppy begins managing Sam’s messages while also trying to conceal the loss of her ring from Magnus and his family. At the outset, I worried that this would seem very contrived and that Poppy would be exasperating. However, like all of Kinsella’s heroines, Poppy has a lot of heart and you can’t help but root for her and get caught up in the chaos that surrounds her. My one quibble was Magnus and Poppy’s relationship – they got engaged and are due to be married very shortly after meeting which did feel contrived and made me question how committed they were to each other from the start.

Each time I pick up the newest Kinsella I hold my breath and hope I am not disappointed. I loved the Shopaholic series and her stand alone novels (my review of Twenties Girl) but I worry that I will outgrow them or her novels will begin to be formulaic. I think the key is the author’s heroines – she has a talent for creating skittish, self-deprecating heroines who have all the best intentions. Those best intentions allow you to forgive their scatterbrained, half-baked predicaments and cheer them on while laughing with them. Poppy Wyatt is this quintessential heroine. Kinsella does this genre like none other and I've Got Your Number doesn’t disappoint!

Thank you to Karen at Random House for providing a copy of this book for review.