Which girl wouldn’t desire the perfect life: a shapely body, the best husband, a high-flying career and being draped with branded goods?

While the dreams lives of millions remain just that, this perfect life dropped right onto the lap of Remember Me? protagonist, Lexi Smart. She’s not exactly the most deserving candidate of such luck though, being an unimpressive associate junior sales manager at a carpet company with the nickname ‘Snaggletooth’ for her ugly teeth, weighing a few extra pounds and living in a tiny flat in Balham, London.

A Fairytale Gone Wrong

All that changed overnight when Lexi’s boyfriend stood her up. Fainting after falling down the steps pissed drunk, she comes to in a hospital with perfect teeth, a lean and toned body, a high-flying career and perfect husband, Eric, who just happens to be a multi-millionaire.

She also happens to have amnesia and has lost the last 3 years of her life. She ’s totally clueless about how she transformed from a 25-year-old working-class unremarkable girl with a small flat in Balham, London into a 28-year-old married woman with the perfect life.

So Lexi begins her new life and rediscovering herself. However, she soon finds out that her charmed life is not as perfect as it seems. Her friends no longer talk to her, her subordinates think she’s a “bitch-boss-from-hell”, her husband doesn’t really know her and even invoices her for things that she breaks in their loft. Lexi even finds out that she might have had an affair with Jon, an architect in her husband’s company during those 3 lost years.

Somewhere along the way, she lost herself mysteriously. The other gnawing question is how on earth she changed her life so drastically?

Just like with her previous novels, most notably the Shoppaholic series, Sophie Kinsella’s Remember Me? is a wonderfully written book, funny and witty , like an incident where she accidentally kills a 300 pound ornamental fish and tries to flush it down the automated toilet in one of her husband’s high-tech lofts project, and sets off the security alarm accidentally instead when she tries to override it. It also makes readers rethink the appeal of modern day fairytales.

While we might envy the celebrity who makes millions easily, has a wonderful house and a drop-dead-gorgeous spouse, the price they pay for that might be being someone that they’re not and losing themselves in the process, just like Lexi. weaves her magic yet again in her latest novel

Kinsella makes her characters very believable, each with their own flaws and imperfections. They’re a wacky and interesting bunch with a life of their own, ranging from Lexi’s sister who suddenly turns into a con-artist, her mum whose life revolves around the dogs she keeps, and her husband who writes her a Marriage Manual when she loses her memory and charges her for things she breaks at home.

Lexi’s journey in rediscovering what happened in the lost years of her life and her quest to find herself again is full of ups and downs. As she unearths more about her past, she finds out more about how events in those years turned her into the current “her” that she hates. She realises that fairytales are not what they seem to be. As Jon said in the book, “Everything looks different when the gloss is gone.”

Remember This

Remember Me? is an interesting read for those who want a good book to curl up with to spend a lazy weekend. It’s easy reading, and a worthy addition to the libraries of those who have read the Shoppaholic series, the Undomestic Goddess and Can You Keep a Secret? .

Remember Me? is available in major bookstores at $34.24.