Review: "I've Got Your Number" by Sophie Kinsella

It's just weeks before Poppy Wyatt's wedding to the handsome and charismatic Magnus Tavish when disaster strikes- she loses her engagement ring during a hotel fire drill and this particular ring just happens to be an antique that has been in the family for three generations! In the pandemonium following the fire drill Poppy's phone is stolen and Poppy panics as she realizes that now she has no ring and she has no phone number to leave with the hotel for in case the ring is found! She can't very well leave the hotel her home number because she isn't ready for Magnus to know that she's lost the ring, but now her cell phone appears to be gone as well. At the moment that Poppy realizes all of this she spots a phone in the garbage can and claims it as her own. After all, if a phone is in the garbage surely it's up for grabs, right?

Wrong. The phone appears to be connected with a local consulting business and it belongs to the handsome Sam Roxton's assistant, who up and quit just moments before. Against his better judgement, Sam allows Poppy to temporarily keep the phone as long as she promises to forward all of his messages on. What follows is the engaging and often unpredictable account of what could happen when you have access to the personal e-mails and messages belonging to someone that you don't know in real life.

I've long loved the Shopaholic series but have found when reading the most recent installments that I have grown out of them. Becky Bloomwood (Shopaholic's main character) does not seem to have grown up along with those of us reading the series. Luckily for me, Sophie Kinsella is writing standalone novels unrelated to the Shopaholic books that manage to captivate and entertain me from the very first pages. I loved Kinsella's last standalone novel, Twenties Girl, and I loved I've Got Your Number as well. Although our main character Poppy still manages to get herself into some fairly... interesting.... situations, there is a level of maturity present that is not present in other Kinsella titles. I've Got Your Number manages to get it right from several angles. We have a heroine who is likable and who we wish success and happiness for, we have just the right amount of conflict (not only does Poppy lose her engagement ring but she has issues with her future in-laws as well), and we have a handsome romantic hero ready to swoop in and hopefully save the day. Is this the stuff that groundbreaking literature consists of? No, but it's entertaining and well-written chick lit at its finest and I, for one, couldn't put it down.

Kinsella has penned a winner with I've Got Your Number. The book is fun, the characters interesting, and if you're anything like me you won't be able to get a thing done until you've devoured it whole. My thanks to the publisher for providing me with this review copy.