I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

It is a very weird sensation when you read a book, enjoy it, and kind of hate yourself for enjoying it because it’s not the kind of book you ever thought you’d enjoy. That’s how I feel about I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella.

I think part of my reaction is the genre it comes under – ‘chick lit’. I really hate that expression. Personally, I find it pejorative. Firstly, it seems to suggest that women only like books that are ‘fluffy’, where the heroine is probably ditzy, gets her guy in the end and where it is mandatory to have at least a percentage of pink on the cover. I mean god forbid women might like a ‘non-fluffy’ book. Also, the expression feels exclusionary – it seems to suggest guys wouldn’t want to read something ‘fluffy’ because they’re always looking for guns, guts and other guy-related words beginning with ‘g’. So, yes, the expression ‘chick lit’ bugs me and because of that I’ve tended to avoid books that come under that banner.

So, having said all that, why was I reading I’ve Got Your Number? Honestly because I was tired. The constant bombardment of news about the US election has been driving me nuts. Add into that that we have just had a snap provincial election here in BC, the Canadian federal government has just avoided having to call a snap federal election and B.C. has just started the Covid-19 second wave and I just wanted to read something to take my mind off of all the shit in real life, which is where I’ve Got Your Number came in.

It’s been sitting on my shelves for ages after I had a bargain book splurge and added it to the pile on a whim, but then it just sat there and I kept ignoring it until this week when I picked it up, started it one afternoon and finished it the following morning – sigh, I hate having to admit I was wrong about things…

Anyway, the basic premise of the book is that our heroine Poppy  is about to marry her ideal man, Magnus (how many people called Poppy and Magnus are in your address book?) when she accidently loses her engagement ring which is a family heirloom and on top of that she has her phone stolen. Both are obviously stressful events and provide the premise for the rest of the book as Poppy tries to hide the fact that she’s sans ring and realizes that most of her life is in her missing phone, forcing her to appropriate an abandoned phone she finds in a rubbish bin (like you do) which puts her in touch with a man she’s never met called Sam, who doesn’t seem impressed to have an unknown girl reading his personal email and  sending him pissy texts.

I cringed at the start of the book because the characters felt like stereotypes. Poppy is ditzy, Magnus is self-absorbed and Sam is a terse, sarcastic businessman with no life outside of his work. However, I have to admit that once I locked my initial judgmental self in the nearest cupboard, I enjoyed the characters and the book. Yes, Poppy continued to be ditzy, but she’s also capable at her job and I felt for her in her self-doubt in meeting Magnus’s high-flying parents. Sam continued to be terse and sarcastic, but the text message sparring was nicely done and rounded out the character. Magnus continued to be self-absorbed but that’s what is needed for the story and who am I to scoff at an effective plot device.

I do have to say, talking of plot devices, the one thing that did irritate me was the constant use of footnotes. Magnus’ parents are renowned academics and early on Magnus tells Poppy that footnotes are for things that aren’t your main concern but nevertheless hold some interest for you. Kinsella uses this concept to pepper the story with footnotes which act as asides to what Poppy is thinking or has been talking about. It’s a nice conceit for a couple of chapters, but I got really tired of it because every time there was a footnote I had to go back up the page to cross-reference what the footnote referred to. (See, me cross-referencing – Magnus’ fictitious academic parents would be proud!)

Anyway, back to the story. I’ll not say how it ends as I’m sure it’s pretty obvious, but it’s nicely written, there is character growth as we discover more about them and there were enough twists and turns to keep me entertained and one that actually made me stop and think wow I didn’t see that coming.

I’ve Got Your Number is a pleasant, easy read and despite my initial trepidation it was just what I needed as an antidote to these stressful times. I’m not saying I’m going to rush out searching for more Sophie Kinsella, because I’m probably not, but if I found another one on the bargain table, I’d definitely consider it if nothing else was calling to me.

Perhaps the most interesting discovery for me out of reading this book isn’t the book itself – it’s about my assumptions about ‘chick lit’. I still don’t like that name and it annoys me that the publishing world has to label things in such a way in order to put them in marketing pigeonholes. But it also made me realise that other books I love could be called chick lit – all of Jane Austen for example or all of Georgette Heyer come to mind – authors which have a bigger female readership than male (or at least I assume so), but none of those have ‘chick lit’ in their genre list next to their IBSN number and I can't imagine Pride and Prejudice having a swathe of shiny pink on the cover, but perhaps that will be in the next edition.

So, my takeaway from all this is that modern marketing is a tool that both helps and hinders. It helps sell books because it acts as shorthand for genres you may be interested in. But it also stops books being sold because it can turn a reader off a genre before they’ve even stuck a toe in the water. Unless of course the reader in question finds the book on the bargain book table and decides to take a punt, because then really, all bets are off.

I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella was first published in 2012 and my copy was published by The Dial Press.

(PS: Can I just say that putting stickers on books that feel like they’ve been put on with super glue should be outlawed. If you wondered what the funny shaped white blob on the photo of the book cover was, it’s where the book sticker actually pulled off some of the cover’s surface when I tried to peel it off. The upside - at least it didn't tear off any off the pink bit...)