It’s funny: despite the fact that I’ve Got Your Number is virtually identical to the other Sophie Kinsella title I’ve read,Can You Keep a Secret?, I liked it vastly more. Both involve somewhat flighty women getting into scrapes with gruff, uncommunicative businessmen who end up becoming love interests despite the fact that the ladies have boyfriends. The boyfriends are maybe not total dicks, but the couples are incompatible in almost all ways. The protagonists tend to compound their embarrassment by blurting out unlikely lies or other shenanigans, and the supporting cast is maybe more interesting than the principles. But I thought the leading lady of Can You Keep a Secret? was an incompetent and possibly an idiot, while Poppy from I’ve Got Your Number was just a little socially awkward. I try not identifying with incompetent idiots, while the socially awkward are very much my people.
I’ve Got Your Number starts with a storm of set-up: Poppy loses her incredibly expensive heirloom engagement ring, a thief nicks her phone right out of her hands, and then she finds another phone in the trash. She’s all, finders keeers, and starts handing out the new phone number to everyone in the hotel so they can call her if they find the ring. Some of this had me saying, wait, what? Because she should have had the stolen phone canceled IMMEJETLY so she didn’t get a thousand pound phone bill, but whatever. This is a lot like some mysteries I’ve read, where the situation is wildly improbable, but it lets the author spin out some genre-specific stuff to its logical conclusion. Here, it’s that Poppy has a near-epistolary relationship with the man who was the boss of the chick who chucked her phone. She’s basically acting as his PA while a company scandal is emerging, and she’s trying to plan her own wedding.
Poppy is funny and meddlesome, and she and the boss-man have a solid repartee. Getting inside someone’s phone is an incredibly intimate thing – depending on the person and all that – this compact record of all our contacts and correspondence, texts and schedules. Even though I’ve been married 15 years (yesterday was our anniversary, thank you) it always feels a little creepy when I open up his phone. Plus, it’s an iPhone, and I just don’t get how to work those. There’s a lot of snap to the scenario here because of that intimacy.
So a cute little cabin read, and I frankly find it surprising no one has made this into a movie yet. It was play great on screen.