Title: An Offer You Can’t Refuse
Author: Jill Mansell
Genre: Chick Lit, Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Source: Purchased
Parental Warning: mild sexual situations

“But this was the kind of situation you needed time to prepare yourself for, time she hadn’t been allowed, and now she was doing her usual thing of being inappropriately flippant. Whereas in reality she was filled with a mixture of giddy excitement — maybe twenty per cent — and eighty per cent fear and trepidation.  Because as far as Dougie was concerned, she’d left him without a word, dumped him and run off abroad without a proper explanation.  Had ten years been long enough for him to forgive her for that?”

Summary:
Lola is naive to the world of the rich and privileged.  Yet she’s in love with Dougie, a young man of wealth and consequence.  A young man whose mother has no interest in his slumming with a girl from the wrong side of town, let alone spending the rest of his life with her.  So when financial difficulty arises for her family Lola takes Dougie’s mother up on an offer she couldn’t refuse and leaves him behind.

That is until a chance meeting many years later brings them back into each other’s lives.

Opinion:
The concept of this book is not particularly unique — mom paying off the destitute girlfriend who needs to save her family to leave the rich boy she loves behind.  But still, I enjoyed it none the less.

Most of Mansell’s characterizations (on an individual level) were wonderfully entertaining.  Lola was funny and somewhat outlandish; she wasn’t afraid to be who she was despite leaving the man she loved behind to better the lives of her family. Gabe, her BFF, was a great counterpart with his dry-wit and sarcasm. He brought truth to Lola when she didn’t want to see it and helped her without fail when she set out to improve her situation.  Sally, the former boyfriend’s sister was eccentric and quirky; delightfully clueless and quite careless with the feelings and preferences of those around her.  But done so in the most endearing way.

Dougie, the jilted boyfriend, on the other hand was a bit flat and boring.  I think he was supposed to be stuffy and pompous as a result of having been left behind but that element of the story wasn’t particularly clear.  In the end it just made him blah overall.  His mother was also pretty cliched.  A helicopter mom that had the ability to hover with the best of them she was the type of rich woman offering money that we always see in movies and television shows.  There wasn’t anything innovative of different in her portrayal here.

I didn’t particularly see any chemistry between Lola and Dougie after she left and came back.  As a result I couldn’t quite get into their story and found myself wondering why she was so desperate to have him back.  I frankly thought she was more fun with her BFF Gabe.  Even more honestly, it’s the story about he and Sally that completely steal the show here.

There was definitely a level of predictability in the story but it didn’t lack in fun and entertainment value.  If I’m being honest I think I would have much preferred the novel switch primary and secondary stories.  It would have been better for me if it centered on Gabe and Sally as compared to Lola and Dougie.  So in the end it wasn’t the best chick-lit novel I’ve read but it wasn’t the worst by a long shot.  It’s definitely worth your time if you’re looking for a read that doesn’t require a lot of heavy lifting but packs some good laughs.