Review: I Owe You One

I Owe You One by Sophie Kinsella
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Fixie Farr works in her family's general houseware shop in Acton, West London. Her older brother Jake is a successful businessman who made his first fortune importing nude, seamless underwear. He has high aspirations for the shop, wanting it to appeal to a more upmarket clientele. Fixie's older sister Nicole is beautiful, she modelled for a short period (aka once) and is very into new age thinking like crystals etc. The store is managed by their mother with Fixie's assistance until her mother becomes unwell and goes to stay abroad with her sister to get better. Suddenly Fixie is combatting her brother's attempts to sell £95 olive oil and £1,000 watches and her sister's decision to hold yoga classes in the shop in the evenings.

The only high spot is that Jake's BFF Ryan has returned from his successful career as a film producer in Hollywood, suddenly single and raising Fixie's hopes that their one-night stand several years ago might blossom into something more permanent.

Then Fixie agrees to look after a stranger's laptop in a cafe while he takes a personal call, the ceiling collapses and only Fixie's quick reflexes save the stranger's laptop. The grateful stranger, Sebastian Marlowe is a local businessman, an ethical investment manager, he gives Fixie an IOU, written on a coffee sleeve, in recognition of her good deed.

What ensues is a series of IOUs where Fixie and Seb exchange favours back and forth. But romantically who will Fixie choose? The new guy or the guy she's been in love with since she was a little girl?

I have to say, for most of this book Fixie was so clueless about the behaviour of her siblings and Ryan that I wanted to shake her, she was infuriating and definitely fell into the too-stupid-to-live category. She was so ineffectual, so passive, so pathetic that I lost any empathy for her, she literally couldn't see what was in front of her eyes. By the end of the book Fixie had turned herself around but by then the damage (for me) had been done. So, I liked the ending but the start was slow.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.


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