Review: Sophie Kinsella’s I’ve Got Your Number

I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

Fiction/Romance, Published February 2012

Read: March 2012, 433 pp.

Challenges: NetGalley Reading Challenge 2012

4.5/5

Book Blurb:

I’ve lost it. The only thing in the world I wasn’t supposed to lose. My engagement ring. It’s been in Magnus’s family for three generations. And now the very same day his parents are coming, I’ve lost it. The very same day! Do not hyperventilate, Poppy. Stay positive !!

Poppy Wyatt has never felt luckier. She is about to marry her ideal man, Magnus Tavish, but in one afternoon her “happily ever after” begins to fall apart. Not only has she lost her engagement ring in a hotel fire drill but in the panic that follows, her phone is stolen. As she paces shakily around the lobby, she spots an abandoned phone in a trash can. Finders keepers! Now she can leave a number for the hotel to contact her when they find her ring. Perfect!

Well, perfect except that the phone’s owner, businessman Sam Roxton, doesn’t agree. He wants his phone back and doesn’t appreciate Poppy reading his messages and wading into his personal life.

What ensues is a hilarious and unpredictable turn of events as Poppy and Sam increasingly upend each other’s lives through emails and text messages. As Poppy juggles wedding preparations, mysterious phone calls, and hiding her left hand from Magnus and his parents . . . she soon realizes that she is in for the biggest surprise of her life.

Thoughts:

I’ve really enjoyed all the books I’ve read from Sophie Kinsella/Madeleine Wickham, but her stand-alones published under Kinsella are my absolute favorite and this one did not disappoint!  Poppy was a fun heroine from the moment she picked up the abandoned phone from the ‘bin.’

When Poppy realizes that the result of “oooh can I wear your ring?’ turns into a free-for-all/fire alarm debacle, and it suddenly goes missing, she is in a panic to get it back.  When all the guests flee from the building and she runs out to contact all her friends, and her phone is stolen from her clasp, she really starts in a panic…her whole life is in that phone!  In today’s world, we can certainly all relate to that at times!  But what if you had to share that phone with someone else?  When Poppy happens to find a phone with no apparent owner, she takes it up as her own, not knowing the drama she will find on the other end!

I loved all the characters and felt that Poppy and Sam’s relationship was totally believable.  The footnotes were hilarious – a bit hard to follow on my kindle, but well worth it!  If you haven’t tried Sophie Kinsella, you don’t know what you’re missing!

Quotes (taken from ARC, will revise when I get a hard copy):

Professors Antony Tavish and Wanda Brook-Tavish are, at this precise moment, flying back from six months’ sabbatical in Chicago.  I can picture them now, eating honey-roasted peanuts and reading academic papers on their his ‘n’ her kindles.  I honestly don’t know which of them is more intimidating.

And what impressed me the most was: There were so many footnotes.  I’ve totally got into them.  Aren’t they handy?  You just bung them in whenever you want and instantly look clever.

Oh God.  How did I get myself into this?  Number one, I can’t sing.  Number two, what do I sing to a Japanese businessman I’ve never met before?  Number three, why did I say singing telegram?

There are some things you just don’t share.  I mean, Magnus has seen every inch of my body, including the dodgy bits, but I would never, ever let him near my phone…All side by side; all touching one another.  I’ve never shared an inbox with anyone in my life.  i didn’t expect it to feel so…intimate.

OK.  I know I’ve been nosy.  But once you start reading other people’s emails, you can’t stop.  You have to know what’s happened.  It’s been quite addictive, scrolling down the endless strings of back-and-forth emails and working out the stories.  Always backward.  Like rewinding little spools of life.

Thanks to NetGalley and The Dial Press/Random House for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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Shopaholic Blues

With the new movie about to come out, I thought I would do a triple deck review for the first three books in the Shopaholic series.  Rebecca Bloomwood is just a hoot.  In her first adventures in Confessions of a Shopaholic, she is a London socialite who just can’t say no to a good deal.  Especially those with the vogue labels.  From sample sales to buying luggage, she has not only maxed out her closet space but all of her credit cards.  And on top of that, Becky is supposed to be the so-called expert on how to save your money and spend wisely.  But after getting numerous statements from her creditors and bank, Becky either hides them away so they don’t really exist or write letters back asking for extensions. The more she tries to cut back, the more she spends.  Can Becky survive the credit crunch?

Then there’s Luke: the perfect, handsome, wealthy English businessman who can’t seem to get enough of Becky’s unusual quirkiness and at first finds her shopping obsession to be amusing.  But will he find it amusing when she’s spending his money?

I really enjoyed Confessions as well as her shopping trips in Manhattan, but I found Becky’s wedding story to be my least favorite so far of the Shopaholic books.  What I loved most about Becky in the first novel, just doesn’t seem to work now in the third.  She’s older, married, and supposed to be more responsible.  While I found Becky’s fun shopping mishaps and her inability to curb her use of her credit card in the first Shopaholic book funny and even a bit relatable, it seems to be completely disrespectful to her husband and herself the way she nonchalantly shops.  Also I really hated the dilemna between picking between her mother’s garden wedding in London and an extravagent million dollar wedding in NYC thrown by Luke’s mother.   I didn’t find this situation funny.  Becky really let the ball drop on this one so I’m hoping Shopaholic and Sister will improve my Shopaholic blues.

I’ve read a few other reviews on this one raving about Becky, so am I the only one with the Shopaholic blues?

I am, however, looking forward to the new movie coming out.  I just love Isla Fisher.

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Catching up with the Shopaholic:

Shopaholic Ties the Knot by Sophie Kinsella

Shopaholic Series #3

Fiction, Published 2003

Read Dec. 2008

3/5

From the Cover:

Life has been good for Becky Bloomwood: She’s become the best personal shopper at Barneys, she and her successful entrepreneurial boyfriend, Luke, are living happily in Manhattan’s West Village, and her new next-door neighbor is a fashion designer!  But with her best friend, Suze, engaged, how can Becky fail to notice that her own ring finger is bare?  Not that she’s been thinking of marriage (or diamonds) or anything…

Then Luke proposes!  Bridal registries dance in Becky’s hand.  Problem is, two other people are planning her wedding: Becky’s overjoyed mother has been waiting forever to host a backyard wedding, with the bride resplendent in Mum’s frilly old gown.  While Luke’s high-society mother is insisting on a glamorous, all-expenses-paid affair at the Plaza.  Both weddings for the same day.  And Becky can’t seem to turn down either one.  Can everyone’s favorite shopaholic tie the knot before everything unravels?

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Confessions of a Shopaholic (#1)

Fiction, Published 2000

Read June 2007

4/5

From the Cover:

Becky Bloomwood has what most twenty-five-year-olds only dream of: a flat in London’s trendiest neighborhood, a troupe of glamorous socialite friends, and a closet brimming with the season’s must-haves.  The only trouble is, she can’t actually afford it – not any of it.  Her job writing at Successful Saving magazine not only bores her to tears, it doesn’t pay much at all.  Still, how can she resist that perfect pair of shoes?  Or the divine silk blouse in the window of that ultra-trendy boutique?  But lately Becky’s been chased by dismal letters from Visa and the Endwich Bank – letters with large red sums she can’t bear to read – and they’re getting ever harder to ignore.  She tries cutting back; she even tries making more money.  But none of her efforts succeeds.  Her only consolation is to buy herself something…just a little something…

Finally, a story arises that Becky actually cares about, and her front-page article catalyzes a chain of events  that will transform her life – and the lives of those around her – forever.

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Shopaholic Takes Manhattan (#2)

Fiction, Published 2001

Read Aug 2007

4/5

From the Cover:

With her shopping excesses (somewhat) in check and her career as a TV financial guru thriving, Becky’s biggest problem seems to be tearing her entrepreneur boyfriend, Luke, away from work for a romantic country weekend.  And worse, figuring out how to pack light.  But packing takes a whole new meaning when Luke announces he’s moving to New York for business – and he asks Becky to go with him!  Before you can say “Prada sample sale,” Becky has landed in the Big Apple, home of Park Avenue penthouses and luxury boutiques.

Surely it’s only a matter of time until she becomes an American TV celebrity, and she and Luke are the toast of Gotham society.  Nothing can stand in their way, especially with Becky’s bills miles away in London.  But then an unexpected disaster threatens her career prospects, her relationship with Luke, and her available credit line!  Shopaholic Takes Manhattan – but will she have to return it?

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