Title: I Owe You One
Author: Sophie Kinsella
Series: N/A
Good but not great
I would like to thank Sophie Kinsella, The Dial Press/ Random House, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Fixie Farr possesses a compulsion to “fix” things. From cleaning up a stain no one would notice to calling 999 despite her friend’s wishes, Fixie derives pleasure in knowing she righted wrongs. She considers the compulsion one of her biggest flaws, because it gets her in trouble more often than it actually helps.
One thing she’s never tried to fix, however, is her family, for fear of upsetting them and causing a rift. Her father’s motto had always been “family first,” and the last thing Fixie wants to do is cause estrangement. Not only that, but her siblings intimidate her, and she wouldn’t know how to confront them even if she wanted to. But when her mother experiences heart trouble and goes on holiday, leaving Fixie as the only thing standing between the family houseware store and her siblings’ disastrous ideas, chaos ensues.
Not helping matters is the sudden return of Fixie’s longtime crush, who appears to want to finally develop a relationship with her. As the business begins to rapidly decline and her love life becomes more confusing than ever, Fixie will have to find the strength to stand up to those dragging her into ruin—or learn to let things go.
I liked this novel for it’s good intentions, and ostensibly it seems solid, but I have issues with it.
Fixie was a great character, and I had a lot in common with her. She was charming and kind and relatable. But I don’t really understand her compulsion to fix things. Where did it come from? You aren’t just born with a neurosis like that (by definition); it’s learned somehow. I have a compulsion to fix things, but it stems from my perfectionism and constant subconscious battle to be good enough and worthy, to meet a perceived high standard, which was cultivated by circumstances in my childhood. It’s also a control thing; I can’t control life, but I can control my environment.
But I’m not sure why Fixie had a compulsion to fix things. To my memory, the reason why was never explored. It was simply fact, and that’s not satisfying to me. She didn’t seem to be particularly preoccupied with her appearance, nor was she always cleaning and tidying. It was just that if she saw something that didn’t comply with her definition of “right,” she felt obligated to make it so. Almost like it was more of a hero complex thing than an OCD thing, which greatly intrigues me, and I wish it would have been explored. Why did she feel she needed to make everything “right,” to always do the “right” thing?
Because of this, Fixie’s arc didn’t meet its potential, in my opinion. She finally recognized what a loser Ryan was and found the strength to not only stand up to her siblings and call them on their shit, but to take active measures to help them solve their own problems. Which is all wonderful. But I wanted her to learn to let things go. Not to be apathetic, but to learn when she should interfere and when she shouldn’t. Instead, she was praised for her interference, encouraged to continue interfering. And yes, sometimes it is a good thing. Sometimes you do a lot of good by interfering.
But it can also be bad, which was mentioned in the novel—several times—but not really demonstrated. It could be argued that Fixie’s asking Seb to hire Ryan was interfering in Seb’s business practices, and I can see that, but we didn’t get to see the negative consequences; those consequences, aside from Ryan’s firing, didn’t affect Fixie. So, to me, that doesn’t count. There was also one moment when she tweaked a vase in Seb’s office, and he deadpan said that that vase hadn’t been moved since his grandmother put it there before she died. He was joking, though, and I wish he hadn’t been. People who think it’s their job to “fix” things can develop a gigantic ego (yes, myself included), and think that their help is not just needed but wanted, too, and it would have been interesting to see Fixie’s ego grow, to see her fix something that wasn’t hers to fix and make things a lot worse, then watch her get knocked back down to size in the aftermath. Rather like what happened to Poppy Wyatt in I’ve Got Your Number.
So while I liked Fixie plenty, I feel that more could have been done with her character. I wish the story had been focused on her need to fix things and why; instead it focused on her dysfunctional family. Which isn’t bad, it just wasn’t all that interesting to me.
Nicole and Jake’s annoying personalities were laid on a little too thick. They were comically obtuse and monumentally selfish, but despite how ridiculous they were, their humbling comeuppances at the end did manage to endear me to them. I wanted someone to tell Uncle Ned where he could shove his blatant sexism; Leila was a sweetie; Hannah and Tim were meh—I’m not sure what they had to do with anything except to give Fixie something else to fix, and ironically, she didn’t want to interfere for once. The book didn’t need their baby conflict. Maybe it would have been more relevant if it had shown her trying to change Tim’s mind but just making him more leery of children. That would have been a great conflict for her.
I liked Seb—Sebastian Marlowe—but I was disappointed in him when he took Ryan’s word instead of asking Fixie for the truth about—whatever that was. We never really found out what went down that day; it was just glanced over. But I mean, Seb knew how full of shit Ryan was, so why would he believe anything Ryan said? He had more sense than that. That was cheaply manufactured drama, to the detriment of a great character, which frustrates me. But it needed to happen so Seb would get back with Briony, who would then plan to toss all of James’s stuff, giving Fixie the opportunity to be Seb’s hero. I’m not satisfied with how that all went down; I wish it had happened differently, in a way that we could have witnessed and that allowed Seb to remain the intelligent man he was.
This was definitely a character-driven novel, and that’s okay, but unfortunately that’s likely why this story lacked energy, particularly in the beginning. Maybe you could call it a slow burn, but I think it remained pretty low-key throughout. Not a whole lot happened that was exciting; there were no shocking twists or reveals. It rode on how much we wanted to see things go well for the characters, and if you don’t find the characters compelling, you probably won’t find this novel compelling.
Overall, I liked this book, but there were times I grew impatient for something to happen. Also, I liked this one better than Surprise Me; this tried to be more like Kinsella’s previous standalone novels, but I can’t see myself revisiting it like I do the earlier ones. However, I still look forward to her next novel.
Fixie’s character was SO ANNOYING. She was weak, pathetic and just could not do the right thing. She kept being SO bad at everything and her thought process was awful.