A Perfect Proposal

by Katie Fforde

[Leah]

Sophie Apperly is the unintentional black sheep of her family, she isn’t an academic like them, and all they seem to do is boss her around, leaving her with little choice but to do as they please. However, after they send her off to look after her Uncle Earl, Sophie realises her family are nothing but greedy money-grabbers so when her best friend Milly invites her to New York, Sophie jumps at the chance. Sophie loves being in New York and her holiday gets even better when she unintentionally befriends a spirited old British lady called Matilda. The only person not happy with Sophie’s relationship with Matilda is Luke, Matilda’s grandson because he believes Sophie to be nothing more than a chancer trying to get one over on his grandmother. After Sophie is invited to Thanksgiving, though, Luke is forced to concede Sophie will be there and tries to befriend her, but not without first asking Sophie for a favour of his own…

I am a huge, huge fan of Katie Fforde’s books and there’s only three of her books I have yet to read out of 16, which means I’ve read an impressive 13 of Katie’s books. Even better, I’ve enjoyed every single one I’ve read; some have been better than others yes, but overall they’ve all been solid 4 or 5 out of 5 reads. I knew that Katie’s newest book A Perfect Proposal was a bit different to her previous reads because it would be the first of Katie’s books to be set on both sides of the Atlantic and I was really looking forward to it as I love books set in America, particularly from British writers’s perspectives so I was pleased to eventually receive a copy to read!

I mentioned in my Love Letters review that Katie appears to have a tried and tested formula that she uses for all of her books; the heroine of the book manages to get herself into a pickle of some sort, usually in the form of having to save something, meets the man she’s destined to fall in love with at some point, they don’t get along at the start but it all ends up rosy before something inevitably breaks them apart. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it and 13 books in I have yet to be bothered about the way in which Katie writes her books, in fact I like the fact they all follow the same format, it’s rather comfortable and at least I know what I’m getting from Katie. It might be predictable and some people might not like it but it works for me and as long as Katie keeps writing books, I will keep reading them.

A Perfect Proposal does not break Katie’s writing mould and I thoroughly enjoyed the read. Surprisingly, the blurb of the book makes it seem as if the entire plot revolves around Sophie’s visit to New York which isn’t totally right. The visit to New York does change Sophie’s life drastically but Sophie is actually only in New York for a short period of the book, around 50 pages or so. As I said, Sophie’s visit to New York does change her life because she meets the lovely Matilda who sends Sophie on a quest to find a house in Cornwall. Added to the fact is Sophie is on her own quest to find out about some drilling rights that may have been bequeathed to her family years ago. Thrown into the mix Matilda’s maddening grandson Luke and Sophie’s in a bit of a pickle. It was great though and I enjoyed having it all unravelling and coming together.

I have to admit that it took me a while to warm to Sophie; for the first part of the book all she seems to do is act like a doormat. She meekly does whatever it is her family requests, then she sets about being some kind of servant when it comes to looking after her Uncle. She then proceeds to do this regularly throughout the book; bending over backwards to make sure the men in her life is well fed and looked after. It grates a bit but I did eventually warm to Sophie because even if she was a bit of a doormat, she was lovely especially compared to her horrid family. I liked Luke, he was a rather typical Fforde hero, himself and Sophie had lots of ups and downs and what not but we all knew how it was going to end. My absolute favourite character though was Matilda, the lady Sophie befriends and Luke’s grandmother. She had so much spirit and so much vibrancy and I wish she had appeared on every page of the book. There were a few more characters, namely Sophie’s family, but the less said about them the better, excluding Sophie’s Uncle Earl who was a great character.

Katie Fforde’s writing style is rather old fashioned compared to most chick lit authors. That’s not a slight in any way as I rather love her writing style. Some words and sentences are a bit different to ones you usually read and aren’t totally to my taste but on the whole I love the way Katie writes. I suppose my only problem with the book was that, for the first half of the book, I didn’t feel it between Sophie and Luke. It really takes off though in the second half and I raced to the finish, desperate to know how it would all end. Katie really excels in the endings of her books, I’ve loved all of them so far and A Perfect Proposal was no different whatsoever. A Perfect Proposal is a must-read for all of Katie’s fans, it’s probably not my favourite of Katie’s books (that honour goes to Highland Fling and Paradise Fields) but it was still good enough and I look forward to Katie’s next offering.