Remember… Sophie Kinsella?

When it comes to chick-lits, I only read the brainchildren of Sophie Kinsella.  Nobody else’s.  For those who are uninitiated (or just can’t get writer names’ right), Sophie Kinsella is the celebrated author of the Shopaholic series, among others.  The first book of Shopaholic series (The Confession of a Shopaholic) was made into a blockbuster movie last year and surely had a huge success in Dubai (the Middle Eastern capital of shopping culture).  To be honest, I didn’t like the movie at all but I am still a big fan of the series (widely considered somehow as a taboo for guys, but what the heck, I love shopping!)

I also love her standalone books although admittedly less so than the Shopaholic series; my most favourite of which is The Undomestic Goddess.  So I had quite a high expectation when I picked Remember Me? from the shelf.  In fact, I made the effort to look for it at all major bookstores in my city with no success.  I finally found it in the English version after a few weeks and thus, it became the first Kinsella’s book I read in its original version.  

Remember Me? tells the story of Lexi Smart, a young woman who believes her life was a total failure. Her job pays little, her boyfriend was an *sshole, her dad – a womanizer, no less - just passed away and allegedly left dozens affairs and loans. The only things that keep her alive are her cute little sister and her three girl friends.

Fast forward three years, Lexi hits herself on the head and wakes up a totally new person.  Now she has a perfect physique, an impossibly good-looking and rich Greek god husband and a directory role at her company!  What she is not aware of is that a big chunk of her memory is also gone, making her live a life she used to have three years ago.

There is one more thing she is not aware of: her successful career and love life was actually founded on compromising her own life and feelings.  In a nutshell, the now successful Lexi is not a happy person.  Lexi has now a big mission to accomplish: turning her "perfect" life the other way around again.

The idea behind Remember Me? is actually very interesting but the execution was, frankly saying, disappointing.  While many of the characters, including Gianna the housekeeper or her girl friends, have great potentials to be developed further, they end up being one-dimensional.  Even conversations seem short and shallow.  Instead, Kinsella spends a lot of the 400+ pages talking about trivial stuffs to give a tad of comical taste to the story.

In all fairness, it would still make a fun read, perhaps something you want to take in a long flight or long wait in the airport or when spending time on the beach.  But after the first few chapters, reading it became much of a tiring chore and although I have to admit I finished the book overnight, it was simply because I had nothing else to do rather than out of any genuine interest.

Having read all other Kinsella’s books (except the one where shopaholic Bloomwood has a baby), I would be happy to keep Remember Me? away as a once-in-a-blue-moon exception of an otherwise a brilliant writer.  But I would definitely not recommend this lacklustre book to any Kinsella fan.  Granted, Kinsella’s touches are perceptible here and there, but the overall story-telling quality is just not on par with her other works.  Its shallowness makes it even comparable to other chick lits to some extent (which is the very reason I do not read chick lits in the first place).