Never one to waste time reading about girls who fall truly, madly and deeply in love with seemingly dreamy men who show up at an ungodly hour with flowers and candy claiming that it’s a surprise? You Had Me at Halo will be your perfect read.

While the book may be classified as an insubstantial chick lit, it certainly isn’t run of the mill because the heroine is neither needy nor ditzy, and the man who is to be the love of her life is a one of a kind stand-up guy who depends on his brains as much as his brawn.

Even though the mundane cover could easily be overlooked when placed on a shelf smothered in bright pink books faced with skinny girls and crystal martini glasses, You Had Me at Halo is a treasure chest packed with laughs and wonderful irony.

The story of serendipitous and other-worldly meetings begins with our precocious and feisty heroine, Holly Evans, watching her funeral (as most spirits do at some point of their career) from the steel and concrete Level One of heaven.

She is, of course, bemoaning her horribly untimely death and raising hell in what should be Utopia. Extremely displeased at having to leave her handsome and successful almost-fiancé, Holly gets into all sorts of cringe-worthy scraps and is promptly and unceremoniously flung back to earth to make peace with her hefty emotional baggage.

As Murphy’s Law would have it, her foray back to the earthly dimension starts off on a hideously wrong foot when she’s placed in the body of a boring computer geek. Because of a gross miscalculation by her Levi’s-loving heavenly shrink who insists on being called a spiritual re-aligner, Holly finds that the computer geek, Vince Murphy, has yet to vacate the vessel.

Yes, yes, you might be frothing in the mouth right now. It’s neither realistic nor very believable, but if you leave your pedant alter ego behind, you’ll see that the author is startlingly sensitive and insightful. Amanda Ashby’s got her idea of a hero down pat and just as she’s wistful when she writes about Holly, she’s tender when she talks about Vince.

A simple man with simple plans, he’s the man all women should hold out for and all men should strive to be. He holds Holly’s hand (figuratively!) while she “eats funny tasting humble pie” and defends her gallantly against Todd, the philandering scumbag of an almost-fiancé.

With that, you can’t help but feel that perhaps Vince was molded after the author’s father and hero who passed away just 3 weeks before she began the book.

Amanda’s first novel is carefully written and her innate ability to create characters that have such amazing chemistry deserves to be applauded. The exciting banter between all the characters, from Holly’s stepmother to the resident office slut, is so enjoyable that you can potentially go from cover to cover in record time.

The novel stems not from its grandiloquent words and complex plot but from its delicate observations of human behaviour, pitched emotions and simple word play that’s guaranteed to have you giggling like a child.

For the days when you feel so down that your toes have a sense of foreboding so strong they might actually cry, You Had Me at Halo is the perfect prescription. It’s a drop-dead funny pick-me-up with a fiercely determined heroine, a generous dose of laughter and a heap of delicious wit.

If Amanda Ashby will oblige with another equally brilliant book, we’ll all have to say “Halo!” to the new Patricia Scanlan.

UrbanWire gives You Had Me at Halo 4.5 out of 5 stars

You Had Me at Halo is available at all bookstores.