Expected: 6 August 2020
Florence Fairfax isn’t lonely. She loves her job at the little bookshop in Chelsea and her beloved cat Marmalade keeps her company at night. She might have been single for quite a while – well, forever actually, if anyone’s asking – but she’s perfectly happy, thank you. And then Florence meets eccentric love coach Gwendolyn, and everything changes.
When Gwendolyn makes Florence write a wish list describing her perfect man, Florence refuses to take it seriously. Finding someone who likes cats, has the sexual athleticism of James Bond and can overlook her ‘counting’ habit? Impossible! Until, later that week, a handsome blond man asks for help in the bookshop…
Rory seems to fit the list perfectly. But is he ‘the one’, or simply too good to be true? Florence is about to find out that her criteria for Mr Right aren’t as important as she thought – and that perhaps she’s been looking for love in all the wrong places…
The review
This is the story of 32-year-old Flo who’s never had a boyfriend, finds one after a love guru gets her to write a ‘wish list’ for her ideal man so that the universe can deliver it to her – in the form of Rory the Tory. And, I loved the essence of this book which is that “having the wrong boyfriend is way more complicated than not having a boyfriend at all.”
It’s pretty predictable in that Flo naturally ends up not with Rory the Tory but the guy who doesn’t meet any of the criteria on her wish list and who she dislikes instantly upon first meeting. But, mostly this genre is pretty predictable and I think that’s the point, it’s a tried and tested formula that we love because it works.
This is also slightly quirky in that it’s a bit yin and yang. In some respects it’s quite twee with brace-wearing toffs, Cinderella style stepmothers, Dickensian bookshops and vocabulary like “calamitous”. But, it’s also weirdly contemporary with laugh-out-loud situational humour, descriptive sex scenes, bloggers and hashtags. I particularly enjoyed the bit where a teenage Instagram poet’s dog humps Flo’s leg live on stage at the bookshop’s first author event.
This is an easy read, despite long chapters, providing much-needed funny feel-good escapism.
The author
Sophia Money-Coutts is a journalist, author and real-life person despite her name, which suggests she's a made-up character from a Jilly Cooper novel. Follow @sophiamcoutts or find out more at sophiamoneycoutts.com
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