Title: I Owe You One
Author: Sophie Kinsella
Publisher: Transworld Digital
Publication Date: 7 February 2019
Website: www.sophiekinsella.co.uk
Twitter: @KinsellaSophie
Instagram: @SophieKinsellaWriter
Facebook: SophieKinsellaOfficial
Blurb
Fixie Farr can’t help herself. Straightening a crooked object, removing a barely-there stain, helping out a friend . . . she just has to put things right. It’s how she got her nickname, after all.
So when a handsome stranger in a coffee shop asks her to watch his laptop for a moment, Fixie not only agrees, she ends up saving it from certain disaster. To thank her, the computer’s owner, Sebastian, scribbles her an IOU – but of course Fixie never intends to call in the favour.
That is, until her teenage crush, Ryan, comes back into her life and needs her help – and Fixie turns to Seb. But things don’t go according to plan, and now Fixie owes Seb: big time.
Soon the pair are caught up in a series of IOUs – from small favours to life-changing debts – and Fixie is torn between the past she’s used to and the future she deserves.
Does she have the courage to fix things for herself and fight for the life, and love, she really wants?
Review
Told in Kinsella’s trademark sprightly and witty style, this is the story of a Fixie Farr and her journey to find her backbone!
Fixie earned her nickname as a result of her obsessive need to ‘fix’ things. Whether it be straightening a wonky book or finding someone a new job, she just can’t help herself. Unfortunately for Fixie she also has one other outstanding trait – a complete inability to stand up to her narcissistic siblings, Jake and Nicole.
Fixie is by far the hardest working member of the Farr family (with the exception of her mother). However she is treated as no more than a general dogsbody by Jake and Nicole, who constantly belittle Fixie and her ideas. With their mother out of the country, how can Fixie stop Jake from trying to turn the family homeware store into a favourite of the rich and entitled (I mean, £95 for a bottle of olive oil!) or Nicole from rebranding the store as an up-and-coming yoga studio? When the company looks to be in trouble, can Fixie finally find the courage to confront her family head-on, all to save the store from going under…?
When a chance meeting with a stranger in a café results in Fixie saving a laptop, Fixie finds herself the holder of an IOU scribbled on a coffee sleeve from the laptop owner, Seb Marlowe. Not that she has any real intention of calling in that debt…. When she is eventually persuaded to call in the favour, things quickly snowball in an unexpected way resulting in the coffee sleeve being passed back and forth as the favours start to grow.
As the main protagonist, Fixie is completely exasperating, but very likeable and very sweet. She’s the type of girl who will always be there in the background helping things to run correctly, but who never seeks credit for doing so. In contrast, the supporting characters are just awful but very entertaining – the type of people readers will just love to hate! The arrogant posturing Jake and vague self-absorbed Nicole are pretty bad, but Jake’s friend, Ryan Chalker, really takes it up another notch! To me, they are written as caricatures – highlighting and emphasising faults that a lot of us are guilty of exhibiting (albeit not nearly to the same extent!).
I Owe You One is a witty exploration of love, life and family dramas. It’s light-hearted, funny, absolutely maddening at times and really very entertaining.
Thank you to The Pigeonhole and Transworld Digital for providing me with access to this book.
About the Author
Sophie Kinsella is a writer and former financial journalist. She is the number one bestselling author of Can You Keep a Secret?, The Undomestic Goddess, Remember Me?, Twenties Girl, I’ve Got Your Number, Wedding Night, My Not So Perfect Life, Surprise Me, the hugely popular Shopaholic novels and the Young Adult novel Finding Audrey. She lives in the UK with her husband and family. She is also the author of the children’s series Mummy Fairy and Me / Fairy Mom and Me, and several bestselling novels under the name of Madeleine Wickham. Visit her website at http://www.sophiekinsella.co.uk.
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