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.
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