Disappointingly lacklustre offering from one of our most skilled fiction writers

Sylvie and Dan have been together for 10 years. They have young twin girls, a nice home outside London, jobs they enjoy and a seemingly perfect marriage. The two know each other so well they can (and frequently, maddeningly do) finish each other’s sentences.

When the couple end up visiting the doctor together for routine check-ups, they learn that they could live for another 68 years.

Suddenly, the idea of spending the rest of their lives together isn’t so appealing.

It’s an interesting premise: now that we are living longer, does the marital vow ‘til death us do part’ need an update? But the novel isn’t all that concerned about this. Instead, in a bid to ‘spice things up’, Sylvie and Dan decide to arrange a series of surprises for one another, which mostly just amounts to buying things.

Sophie Kinsella is known and loved for her spar- kling sense of humour, but it’s sadly lacking here. When the comic mishaps involve online shopping for cashmere cardigans and a dated boudoir photoshoot, the gags quickly fall flat.

The story moves along slowly enough until Dan takes Sylvie to a garden he helped design in college and is reminded of an old flame that Sylvie never knew about. Things start to go awry when Sylvie discovers a secret mobile phone and worries that her husband may be slipping away from her. Kinsella’s protagonists are reliably smart and witty, but Sylvie is by far her weakest heroine and so irritating a lead that the book becomes a slog.

By the halfway point, my feelings were not unlike Sylvie and Dan’s in the doctor’s office and I, too, wanted to abandon ship.

When she’s not mooning over her late father, Sylvie is almost unbearably childlike.

Nicknamed “Princess Sylvie”, she is besotted with her waistlength blonde hair.

She eventually learns to grow up, but 368 pages is a long way to follow a grown woman acting like a teenager.

Dan is so bland that he leaves no impression, making it tough to root for their romance, but Kinsella is more focused on the dynamic between Dan, Sylvie and her late father, anyway.

Fans shouldn’t give up on Kinsella, but this is a disappointingly lacklustre offering from one of the most skilled popular fiction writers.

For readers new to the author, try one of her other works instead.