I've Got Your Number

I needed some fluff after the last few books, and Sophie Kinsella is always good for that. I enjoy her humor and her characters.

This is the story of Poppy a bride to be who leaves her bridal shower tea due to a fire alarm and and discovers her engagement ring is missing.  As she is standing outside ready to make calls to her friends to see who has her ring, her phone is stolen.

She starts to go in the direction of the thief when she sees a phone tossed in a garbage can. She picks it up thinking it is hers. She quickly realizes it's not but rationalizes that she needs a phone and since this one is in the trash it's fair game.

Turns out the phone belonged to Violet - PA of an executive at a consulting firm. She walked off the job in the middle of a big conference. Her boss, Simon, is desperate to get the phone back but Poppy refuses, insisting that she needs the phone until her ring is returned. She promises to forward messages etc to Simon in return.  He reluctantly agrees.

Poppy has a tense relationship with her academic in-laws. She thinks they think she is inferior to them and not good enough for their son, Magnus. She is a physical therapist, Magnus is an academic like his parents.

She is scheduled to go to dinner at their house after she loses the ring and knows she can't show up not wearing it as it is a family heirloom. She comes up with a plan for the ring, but the evening is still as tense as any other of their meetings.

Poppy has an utterly useless wedding planner named Lucinda, who is constantly making excuses for all the things she lets slip through the cracks (which Poppy usually ends up taking care of herself). As the story continues, the reason for Lucinda's purposeful incompetence comes to light.

As the story unfolds, Poppy digs deeper into the emails and texts on Violet's old phone and sends messages on Simon's behalf without telling him. She has good intentions as she feels as though he is ignoring certain people and issues that need to be addressed. In most cases her actions were totally opposite to what Simon would have done and the results are entertaining.

Poppy's fiancé Magnus is a pretty flat character. Poppy receives anonymous texts about Magnus being unfaithful, just as she's in the middle of handling a big to-do for Simon that she probably shouldn't have been involved in in the first place. However her view as an outsider and a few more strange messages on her phone actually are helpful in handling a scandal the firm becomes accused of.

I won't give anymore away, except to say I was satisfied with the ending. I read this in about 24 hours. As most of her books they are quick reads.

It was also the first book I read on the Kindle app for the iPad. My mother-in-law loves her Kindle but I still think I want to stick with real books. I thought this would be a good test, but forgot that Kinsella often puts little side-bar comments in footnotes at the end of the chapter. Although they were set up so you just tap on the number to get the footnote and tap again to go back, I found myself skipping pretty much all of them as I found it kind of annoying. At this point I think I'll still continue reading real paper books, but maybe try this again for travel or once kids are back in activities again, and I want to have something with me while I wait. My library has a fair number of books for Kindle and the download was easy enough.

I think the main thing I didn't like about it though was it was too easy for the kids to come up, touch the screen and make me lose my page. Also when I'm getting tired sometimes I like to know how many pages in the next chapter before continuing - easier to do with a real book. Also afraid of dropping the damn thing if I doze off reading as I often do. Still that's the kind of stuff that comes with getting used to any new thing.

If I did use it more I would need a case for it. When I took the kids to the library, I wrapped it in a microfiber towel - lame I know, but I didn't want the screen getting scratched. I found two cool ideas for DIY cases on Pinterest that I may try to combine to make something that would work for me. At this point we hardly ever use the iPad but I would like to use it more.