Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella - Book Review

 

Sophie Kinsella is one of my favourite writers. If you haven’t read her books, you might have watched the movie adaptation of Can You Keep A Secret or Confession Of A Shopaholic. I have a number of her books, and I do enjoy reading her words. 

Twenties Girl is considered a rom-com book. The protagonist, Lara, is in a big tiff. Her career life is a mess, ever since her partner has left and stayed on their holiday with a mystery man. Her love life is also a mess, yet she still believes that she and her ex, Josh, will end up together. 

The novel opens up to Lara’s family going to her great-aunt’s funeral, who died at the age of 105. Lara doesn’t want to go, for the simple fact that she has never met this great-aunt, Sadie. 

At the funeral, Lara hears this voice and sees a figure. It’s a ghost, dressed up in twenties clothes and looking for her dragonfly necklace. This ghost is rather persuasive, having some sort of power from the dead and manages to force Lara to stop the funeral. Suggesting that her great-aunt has been in fact murdered, even though she was extremely old. We quickly learn that this ghost is in fact Sadie, but she doesn’t look like the old lady in the photo, she looks like how she did in her twenties. Sadie has one simple mission, and that is to find her dragonfly necklace and only then will she be able to truly pass on. And thus the mission begins. 

During this investigation of finding the necklace, Sadie and Lara, although having a rocky relationship due to their different personalities, do help one another in many different ways. Lara sorts out her career and love life, all because of Sadie. 

Of course, at the start of the book when you learn that Sadie needs to find this necklace, you already can tell that she ends up retrieving and passing on, due to the genre of this novel; which is very common to have the pay-off ending. 

Whenever I read Sophie Kinsella’s books, there is one thing that she does extremely well. It’s that each character has their unique personality. Anyone can tell that Kinsella has worked hard during the planning stage to develop these big differences which will affect how they will behave, and how it can cause conflict. 

I do enjoy how these characters develop. Each of these main characters have a clear arch. During my time at University we were told the importance of this, even if it’s a little change. Therefore, seeing it done by a well known author is fantastic to view. 

To add on top of that, Sophie Kinsella wrote this book due to a friend saying she should write a ghost story. Automatically, one would think a ghost story would fit well in a horror book. Yet, Sophie Kinsella’s imagination spins this around and makes this not a thriller but a joyful thing. 

Unfortunately, there are a few areas that I did not enjoy that much. It could be due to this book coming out in 2009, and now twelve years later, times have changed, or it could simply just be me personally. I did occasionally find the protagonist, Lara, irritating. 

She would moan about her ex continuously. In the first chapter she states how many times she has messaged him, and he never replies. We later learn how he bought a new phone, after she purposefully got on a train and went where he goes for work to bump into him. This stalking and obsessive behaviour would have had a completely different outcome if Lara was a man. 

I have similar opinions to Sadie. She was very much wanted things her way, acting like she was a two year old forcing everything to go their way. Although, yes these behaviours did add into their development, and perhaps help with the flow of the book. I would still find myself annoyed by their behaviour. 

As much as I love Sohine Kinsella’s novels. I am sad to admit that this might have to be my least favourite book of hers. Perhaps it is due to how different society is now than it was a decade ago that I can’t find myself to relate to these characters — who knows. 

Yet saying that, I know I will forever love how Sophie Kinsella writes and I know for sure that I will buy more books of hers.