Twenties Girl: A Novel
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- ISBN13: 9780385342025
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Lara Lington has permanently had an overactive imagination, but suddenly that imagination seems to be in overdrive. Normal professional twenty-something young women don’t get visited by ghosts. Or do they?
When the spirit of Lara’s fantastic-aunt Sadie–a feisty, demanding girl with firm thoughts about fashion, like, and the right way to dance–mysteriously appears, she has one last request: Lara must find a missing necklace that had been in Sadie’s possession for more than seventy-five years, and Sadie cannot rest lacking it. Lara, on the additional hand, has a number of ongoing distractions. Her best friend and business partner has run off to Goa, her start-up company is floundering, and she’s just been dumped by the “perfect” man.
Sadie, but, could care less.
Lara and Sadie make a hilarious sparring duo, and at first it seems as though they have nothing in common. But as the mission to find Sadie’s necklace leads to intrigue and a new romance for Lara, these very different “twenties” girls learn some surprising truths from each additional along the way. Written with all the irrepressible charm and humor that have made Sophie Kinsella’s books beloved by millions, Twenties Girl is also a deeply moving tribute to the transcendent bonds of friendship and family tree.Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: Sophie Kinsella on Twenties Girl
Sophie Kinsella is a ex- financial journalist and the leader of the best-selling novels Confessions of a Shopaholic, Shopaholic Takes Manhattan, Shopaholic Ties the Knot, Shopaholic & Sister, Shopaholic & Baby, Can You Keep a Secret?, The Undomestic Goddess, and Remember Me?. She lives in England, where she is at work on her next book.
Writing Twenties Girl was like going on my own magical mystery tour. My U.S. editor Susan Kamil had once said casually, “You should write a ghost tale one day.” This comment stayed with me for years. I loved the thought, but didn’t know who my ghost could be. I’ve permanently loved the glamour and spirit of the 1920s, and the thought came to me of a flapper ghost. A feisty, fun, glamorous girl who adored to dance and drink cocktails and get her own way. I wanted her to be a determined character who would blast into the life of a name with no warning and cause havoc. I then chose she should haunt a painstakingly modern girl, with all the culture clashes and comedy that would bring.
Having come up with this thought I loved it, so it then remained to plunge myself into 1920s research, which was no hardship at all, as I find the era fascinating. I researched vintage make-up, vintage dresses, read fiction from the period, investigated 1920s slang, and tried to channel as much I could of persons feisty flappers who cut their hair fleeting (shock!), smoked cigarettes in public (shock!), had sex (shock!) and generally rebelled in all the outrageous ways they could.
The book isn’t a period piece though. It’s a modern tale about two girls and their sparky friendship, right here in the 21st century. One of them just happens to be a ghost from the 1920s. It’s a quest, a romance, and a coming of age… and above all a comedy. It’s no exaggeration to say that writing the character of Sadie made me look at life differently, and I hope some readers feel the same way. —Sophie Kinsella
Sophie Kinsella on Jewelry in Twenties Girl
When I was at college I had a bicycle which I rarely used and which sat, week after week, in the bike racks. One day I went to get it out–and establish a diamante necklace twined round the spokes of the front veer. It was an ancient, vintage-style necklace, one of the prettiest things I’d ever seen. On my bike! How had it got there? Had a name borrowed my bike and dropped it? Was it a romantic gift from a secret admirer? (Ok, unlikely…)
I place up a notice in college–but got no claimers. It was mine! I wore that necklace over and over–and felt as though it had somehow magical qualities. Would it have felt so magical if it were a scarf or a hat or a purse? I don’t reflect so.
Jewelry has a magic all its own. Precious stones have permanently attracted legends, myths, crimes, lust. Reasonably sane women will go to pieces at the sight of a huge enough diamond. Even as a tiny child I was fascinated by beads, jewels, tiaras…anything that glittered. And, like books, I find it hard to give pieces of jewelry away, even after I’ve stopped wearing them.
The largest symbol of jewelry is like. Whose heart doesn’t stop on being open with a small velvet box? Who secretly doesn’t pine for a diamond, but microscopic? Of course right like is putting out the rubbish every night…but that won’t make you gasp and tilt your hand to catch the facets of light.
When I was writing Twenties Girl I knew I needed to give Sadie, my ghost character, a mission. There was something in the world she still wanted–and it didn’t take long to choose on jewelry. A ring seemed too obvious…bracelets too inconsequential…but a necklace was perfect. I wanted it to be tactile, romantic, and the kind of piece you could imagine wearing with anything. Guided by research into jewelry of the 1920s, I conjured up in my head a long necklace of glimmering yellow glass beads, with a dragonfly pendant set with rhinestones. Not priceless….but special. I could imagine Sadie twirling the beads as she danced, I could imagine her gathering them and letting them drop. I could see it as an iconic, timeless piece.
A dragonfly seemed a perfect emblem for Sadie, too–gorgeous, fragile, and darting around like quicksilver. The dragonfly symbol has different meanings for different cultures–for some it’s a symbol of change, for others it represents the subconscious. In Japanese paintings, dragonflies can mean new light and joy. To some Native Americans they’re the souls of the dead. All of these interpretations are perfect for the character of Sadie–a ghost who needs to “go on” and for whom the dragonfly necklace has a meaning all its own.
The more I wrote about Sadie’s dragonfly necklace the more it came to mean to both her and me–and I hope it does to readers, too.
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I like all of Sophie Kinsella’s books, and was looking forwards to buying this on my new Kindle. But, I can get it for just a small more at the bookstore, so I’m going to buy the book as a replacement for. I’m sure there will be lots of reasonably priced books for me to delight in on my Kindle.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
This book was so terrible that I tossed it midway through. One of the worst books I have ever read, hands down.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This book was certainly a excellent beach read, despite the fact that the main character was SO annoying. The whole first half of the book she just complains and complains about her break-up. I had to jump a couple paragraphs because I got tired of just READING about her whining! It was a excellent premise, but some of the tale lines feel unfinished and not fleshed out enough. A quick, light-hearted read, but I do wish that I had waited and bought it cheaper in paperback!
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Sophie Kinsella is credited by many as the leader that got them into chick lit. Readers stumble upon the Shopaholic series, and it explodes from there – I’ve heard the tale many times, and it is applicable to myself, too. I marvel if anyone who had not heard of the Shopaholic book series before watching the movie have now chose to follow up with Shopaholic and Baby?
Due to lack of Kinsella novels to read (I have read them all), I recently reread Remember Me? and had plans to reread the Shopaholic series… until I establish out she was publishing another book.
In steps Twenties Girl – a novel about two young women, one of them being a ghost. The basic plot made me a small wary – for some reason I’m not huge into ghost novels – and I remained wary for the first few chapters, but there was no denying that this book was written by the talented Kinsella, and that fact alone kept me hooked.
I will admit, I was starting to get very annoyed with the bossy ghost – because of her ghost attributes, she was able to manipulate many situations, and sometimes I establish it utterly annoying. Most of the novels I read have very real scenarios, and while I’m not adage ghosts don’t exist (because really, who knows?) I haven’t heard many tales about ghosts talking to people this much.
After about middle through the book, pieces ongoing fitting together, seemingly unrelated plot lines ongoing intertwining, and I establish myself reading the second half of the book in one sitting (which was no simple feat, this isn’t a fleeting novel). Perhaps if I had been paying attention I would have caught on to some of the things that transpired, but I am never excellent at that anyway, so as a replacement for I was shocked at some of the events.
This book gets an additional thumbs up because it was held to a privileged standard than I usually hold books – because I had read a multitude of Sophie Kinsella books, I already expected to delight in this one, and could have very easily been let down (I wasn’t).
Sophie Kinsella fan or not, this was a fantastic summer read. I even (gasp) took a break from my Sookie Stackhouse books to read it, which should say a lot if you’ve been paying attention to my additional reviews. The only downside is that now I don’t have any additional Kinsella’s to read. I guess I may end up rereading the Shopaholic books after all.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
“Twenties Girl” by Sophie Kinsella is a gorgeous and amusing book about like, family tree and the most unusual, unique and hilarious ghost.
Lara Lington’s life is about to get even more intricate and weird (as if it isn’t terrible enough that her boyfriend Josh just recently broke up with her, that she has financial problems, that the partner in her firm just doesn’t want to come back from her holiday and that Lara has to work like crazy to keep the firm from going under) when she starts seeing the ghost of her Fantastic Aunt Sadie. Sadie wants Lara to find a necklace that Sadie permanently wore and now has disappeared. Of course Lara is shocked to see Sadie in form of her ghost especially because she never really knew her before and only went to her funeral out of family tree obligation. But still Lara is willing to help Sadie find her necklace and her peace.
Soon afterwards Lara realizes that there is more to the missing necklace than she first thought and that to find it she has to uncover some family tree secrets and learn more about Sadie’s life. Lara and Sadie soon become friends and the tale takes another turn when through Sadie Lara meets Ed (he’s an American businessman currently effective in London) and goes out on a date with him so that Sadie can experience one last date through Lara. What starts out at as favour for her aunt’s ghost soon develops to a chance of a new relationship for Lara. But to have a future with Ed Lara first has to solve the mystery surrounding the necklace, her relationship with Josh plus her frustrating work situation.
Normally I’m not a huge fan of tales with ghosts but Sophie Kinsella really made it work for me. Sadie gives the tale so much depth and I like the relationship between Lara and her, especially because she wants Lara to be pleased and has some very special ways to help her.
Lara is the kind of heroine I like. She’s a kind person, sometimes not sure about what to do with her life and willing to help Sadie even though her own life is already intricate enough. I also like that the book has a first-person narrator because experiencing the tale through Lara’s eyes is just wonderful and regularly very amusing.
I like how Lara finally realizes that she doesn’t need (and want) Josh in her life and that maybe Ed is not really the snobby American she thought him to be.
Ed is another fantastic character and the relationship between Lara and him is very lovely but the book is more about Lara and Sadie and not mainly about Lara and Ed. Even though I like books where the relationship between heroine and hero is the main part I like how Sophie Kinsella made Lara and Sadie the two central characters of the book. The scenes between them are just perfect and make the book extra remarkable and fantastic.
So all in all I just like “Twenties Girl” and can recommend it to every romance fan. The book left me with a huge smile on my face and a warm feeling in my heart so it’s simple for me to say that you should give it a try.
Oh, and if you can choose between the British and the US version go with the British one because the take in is just gorgeous and perfect for the book.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5