If I could live inside of a Sophie Kinsella novel, I would. These books are as happy and glamorous and frothy as any chick lit tomes worth their glitter. Plus, they've got heart. Kinsella's latest, I've Got Your Number, is all about Poppy Wyatt, a heroine that rivals Rebecca Bloomwood in the kooky-sweet, Lucille Ball-esque but well-meaning hijinks department. A fun-loving physical therapist (or, as they say on the other side of the pond, physiotherapist) engaged to a self-important, chauvinistic academic named Magnus, Poppy is catapulted into full crisis mode from page one, when we meet her scrabbling on a hotel floor in search of her heirloom emerald engagement ring. Because this is the wacky world of Kinsella, this incident marks just the beginning of Poppy's misfortunes. During the course of her hunt, her cell phone is stolen. Thunderclouds loom until - miracle of miracles - a discarded phone beams up beacon-style from a garbage can. Poppy picks it up, shakes off the spilled coffee, and embarks upon a modern fairy tale scripted largely by the plethora of text messages, voicemails, and emails to which she is now intriguingly and hilariously privy.
What begins as a purely selfish pursuit quickly mushrooms into a quest for corporate justice. Much like the credit card-wielding character who came before her, Poppy becomes enmeshed in a kind of Working Girl caper minus the shoulder pads and blond ambition. Which is to say that, like Melanie Griffith's Tess, Poppy is smarter than she looks, a girly girl deciphering deception after deception in the big bad world of business. Yet Poppy's not trying to get ahead. She just wants to get at the truth. Of course, there's a good bit of romance too. If the love triangle that forms between Poppy, Magnus, and what may be fiction's most appealing unknown caller is a little predictable, then it's every bit as satisfying as a more surprise-infused scenario. Not that Number doesn't have its surprises.
And that's as good a stopping point as any. If nothing else, you can't say I'm a spoiler.
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