The Perfect Proposal by Sophie King - A Book Review

I have never read a single Mills and Boon novel in my life but I can imagine they are not too dissimilar in style to this romance novel by Sophie King. 

It has all the classic features of your average, stereotypical, easy read, chick lit novel which is not a genre I find myself gravitating towards that often. The Perfect Proposal however, is chick lit with a very unique selling point and for that reason, I couldn't wait to get stuck into this book as soon as it was available to buy on my Kindle. This particular USP transported me back to the golden era of a Ramsay Street full of mullets...before Jim Robinson had his heart attack, Helen Daniels was still the reining queen of Erinsborough, and her Grandson, Paul had just hired a new Promotions Manager for Lassiters named Gail Lewis. 

The book centres around Paul and Gail hatching a plan to fake a relationship with each other and going through the motions of marrying for convenience in order to seal an elusive deal with Japanese investor, Mr Udagawa, who rates family values above anything else. It sounds completely far fetched but this was a real storyline that happened in Neighbours back in the late 80s and from what I gather, the book stays very true to the 30 year old plot.

The writing itself certainly won't win any literature prizes but I have definitely read worse books in my lifetime and the story flowed extremely easily. As somebody who was far too young to remember this iconic storyline first hand from the show, I really appreciated the opportunity to delve deeper into the origins of Paul and Gail's relationship and to revisit this bygone era of Neighbours history.

The only thing that I felt was lacking somewhat was the sexiness levels. I wouldn't want it to go full Fifty Shades (because that is a terrible book and you'd better off reading literally anything else) and I know the story was plucked from a family show in an era before the Kennedy's moved to the street with all their filthy blue box habits and it was also before the script writers added blatant innuendos into every other episode but I just feel the levels of secret desire between the two main characters could have been amped up a few notches. After all, what's the point of writing Neighbours fan fiction starring Sex God Robinson and not using the excuse to take full advantage of it?

If you love Neighbours (and if you don't, why are you even reading this blog?) or if you love easy chick lit novels then I definitely would recommend reading this book and for me personally, it was the perfect accompaniment to my Aussie adventures. Over on the Amazon page, it says in brackets that this is Neighbours book 1 so I am very much looking forward to reading more Neighbours based romances by Sophie King in the future.

An Afternoon in Frankston

It was my birthday a couple of days ago and I decided to spend it at the beach. It was a lovely sunny day and I wanted to experience Frankston for the day to pay homage to the hometown of the great and wondrous Canning family of modern day Ramsay Street fame...despite the warnings from both my friends and my cousin who all tried to persuade me to go to literally any other beach! Do they not know I have important Neighbours related research to do???

Frankston City Centre 

Frankston has a bit of a negative reputation and is allegedly "full of bogans" which, I assume is why the slightly rough and ready Cannings originate from there. So I set out on the train to discover bogan central for myself and was slightly disappointed when I discovered it was full of average normal people. In fact, it strongly reminded me of my hometown of Gloucester but with an added beach. The only difference was the fact that where I'm from, there are more seagulls (despite being an inland city) and we call bogans; chavs. Other than that, the city centre was just like any small city centre consisting of a few closed shops, a couple of nice looking coffee shops, an H&M, a Nandos, a cinema and a well maintained shopping centre. It was a bit run down but most town and small city centres are.

Enjoying every moment

I discovered a great bookshop called Robinson's and it made me very happy knowing that Paul is expanding his empire outside of the hotel and housing industry. It was full of exciting and educational books, DVDs and plushies of various ABC Kids characters (because not only am I a massive Neighbours nerd but also a children's TV one) and I had to drag myself away before I bought the whole set of Wiggles, Giggle and Hoot, Bananas in Pyjamas and Playschool toys.

Later on I found out that Robinson's is a small Victoria based family run chain of bookshops with stores all over the state but the one I stumbled across in Frankston was the founding store.

Robinson's bookshop on Station Street Mall

I was very restrained and didn't buy any of these toys. Somebody really should remind me that I'm in my mid 30's now.

There were a few cheap clothes shops on my way to the beach so I set about searching for the most Xanthe Canning looking clothing item I could find. There were a few dresses that fit the bill but were way too small for me to try on. I did however find this crop top with Brooke Butler's classic seductive phrase written on it (she's Xanthe's mum, the one who sold fake jewellery to Dr K and she's not from Frankston but she is an extended member of the Canning family so ). Unfortunately I'm terrible at posing for the camera and can't even look in the right direction so I feel I didn't do this top enough justice.

This is what real women look like...because who needs to do their hair and put on makeup when they're on the way to the beach! 

Frankston Beach

The beach itself was really lovely. Obviously I went on a weekday in autumn (but it was still 26 degrees celsius) so couldn't tell you what it's like in peak weekend summer mode but the main beach area was clean, fairly quiet and mainly consisted of families enjoying themselves. There were also some pretty cool statues next to the promenade.

Seagulls being buffeted around by the wind

Reading the Neighbours chapter in the book I got for my birthday, Small Screens: Essays on Contemporary Australian Television

Crabs at sunset 

Seagulls and chips

I'm not even sure what this one is meant to be but it's pretty cool regardless

A bit further down the beach there were some lovely sand dunes and hardly any other people except for a couple of kite surfers and dog walkers.

Kananook Creek

There's a gorgeous looking river running parallel to the shore. If I had left myself more time I would have definitely followed the trail upstream because being near water makes me happy.

There is also an interesting sand sculpture installation near the beach that I didn't go to but looked pretty impressive from afar. You can find out more about it here.

All in all, I very much enjoyed my birthday afternoon in Frankston. I'm not going to lie and say it's now my preferred beach of choice because there are many many beautiful beeches around Melbourne. The city centre, as I said previously, was perfectly ok but nothing special. It was however a good day out overall and the sand dunes and the gorgeous views down Cananook Creek really made the experience stand out from the other beach days I've had so far.


If you would like to get in touch or have any suggestions as to where I should visit, please email me at dagsontour@gmail.com or find me on Twitter @fiona_mclean. Equally if you would like to see some of my non Neighbours related travel pics or have a nosy at some photos of the things I sell on Etsy (I knit and sew crazy things) then feel free to follow me on Instagram too @mcpoodleshop.