By Sowon Jessica Moon
She loves shopping, she works as a personal shopper at Barney’s, she lives in a great apartment in the West Village with her great boyfriend; this is the life of Becky Bloomwood in the last of Sophie Kinsella’s series in Shopaholic Ties the Knot.
Prior to this last of this series, Kinsella had written Confessions of a Shopaholic and Shopaholic takes Manhattan. Though I had not read the previous novels, I took a shot at this final novel after I was told it was a National Bestseller and a novel every girl should read. Early on into the novel, Becky Bloomwood is proposed to by her boyfriend Luke Brandon. Seemingly a primary novel of the plannings of the wedding, Kinsella adds a twist when a cold, icy future mother-in-law Elinor Sherman hires a wedding planner, Robyn to have a wedding at The Plaza. Though this was a dream of Becky Bloomwood, a woman who loves to live lavishly, her mother back at home in Oxshott, England, is busy planning the wedding of not only Becky’s dreams, but her mother’s dreams as well. Here then arrives the conflict of what Becky Bloomwood wants more, the Plaza wedding that everyone seems to be talking about, or the traditional wedding in her backyard that her parents have been dreaming about for their only daughter.
As the main character attempts to decide, she runs into further problems. Elinor Sherman, a woman who constantly gives her the “Manhattan Once-over” and criticizes Becky in every aspect possible, is a woman who Becky despises but her new fiancé, Luke, adores. As the story turns out, Elinor Sherman had left England and her son, Luke to move to New York. Luke, who spent most of his life attempting to reacquaint himself with his birth mother and gain approval from her, discovers his mother may not be the saint he had viewed her to be, leaving Becky Bloomwood to balance the chaos of two weddings, her future mother-in-law, Luke, and her best friend Suze who recently got married and had a child.
Though the story itself seems rather bland, Kinsella adds frequent humor and twists to keep the reader engrossed. I was extremely skeptical, as this is not a novel I would normally consider reading. Kinsella achieves a new definition of “chick-novels” by making the story line appealing to women but interesting enough to keep it from boring readers such as myself who are not prone to books that deal essentially with material goods and marriage. It is not, however, a book that goes in depth philosophically but is instead a fun book to read to get away from life’s troubles.
This novel momentarily escapes the reader into the hilarious life and witty character of a woman that most would love to be and consequently hate to be. It is a great novel to curl into to end the day with, it was entertaining and though this was the last of a series of Kinsella’s Shopaholic novels, I would gladly pick up the previous two without hesitation.