Why we think this is one of Sophie Kinsella's best books
This has all the ingredients of a Sophie Kinsella novel: her usual brand of humour, an unbelievable plot (see also ‘Can you keep a secret?’ or ‘Twenties Girl’), cover-ups that in reality would be too hard to believe (classic example: Stalling a Japanese businessman, pretending to be a singing telegram from a “fan” performing Beyonce’s Single Ladies. Ingenious!), and a simple message in the middle of all the chaos. Though we cannot say the same for her more recent books but that is for another day!
👧🏻Meet Poppy - textbook people pleaser. She picks up an abandoned phone from the garbage, for reasons that we are still not certain would warrant such an action. Poppy’s rule for life is, “If it’s in a bin it’s public property”.
👦🏻Meet Sam - owner of said garbage phone, and is also the opposite of Poppy, i.e. has zero f*#ks to give. Also does not agree with the logic of ‘Finder Keepers’!
But Sam reluctantly agrees to share his phone with Poppy and what entails is a sweet story of how these two people help each other out. Could we imagine sharing our phones with somebody? God, no! We get nervous sweats thinking of the invasion of privacy! But, it was a lot of fun reading Sam and Poppy do it, no nervous sweating at all.
Sam is the best, he is straightforward, honest, does his job, and doesn’t think for everyone else in the world. And as he gets to know Poppy, he learns to be perceptive, more approachable and welcoming of people, but mainly that he shouldn’t reply to his emails with just, “OK. Sam.”
But Poppy is why this book is one of our favourites! Poppy is all of us at some point: there is insecurity, self-doubt and that feeling of being “less than” next to someone who, on paper, is “more educated”, “done more things”, or “fancier”. She is one of those “ridiculous people”, as Sam puts it, who adds “thanks and appreciation and a zillion kisses” to every run-of-the-mill text message. She learns to stand-up for herself and ask for what she wants without compromising her compassionate nature. We recognized a kindred spirit in Poppy, the need to add more thanks and sorrys (though not as many kisses) than required to be “nice”, to pacify and please but we now have Sam’s voice in our head to ask the hard-hitting questions like, “but why?”.
P.S. Sophie Kinsella uses footnotes as a device to add more flavour to Poppy’s commentary, they are for “things which aren’t your main concern but nevertheless hold some interest for you”. It’s brilliant.
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