Sophie Cousens worked as a TV producer in London for more than twelve years and now lives with her family on the island of Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, located off the north coast of France. She balances her writing career with taking care of her two small children, and longs for the day when she might have a dachshund and a writing shed. She is also the author of This Time Next Year, which was an instant New York Times bestseller. You can find Sophie on Instagram @sophie_cousens, on Twitter @SophieCous, or on her website sophiecousens.com.
Hopeless romantic and lifestyle reporter Laura's business trip to the Channel Islands isn't off to a great start. After an embarrassing encounter with the most attractive man she's ever seen in real life, she arrives at her hotel and realizes she's grabbed the wrong suitcase from the airport. Her only consolation is its irresistible contents, each of which intrigues her more and more. The owner of this suitcase is clearly Laura's dream man. Now, all she has to do is find him. Besides, what are the odds that she'd find The One on the same island where her parents first met and fell in love, especially as she sets out to write an article about their romance? Commissioning surly cabdriver Ted to ferry her around seems like her best bet in both tracking down the suitcase owner and retracing her parents' footsteps. But as Laura's mystery man proves difficult to find—and as she uncovers family secrets—she may have to reimagine the life, and love, she always thought she wanted.
This novel takes romantic comedies seriously—and as a huge rom com fan myself, I was 100% here for it. There is the meet cute, there are the trials, there is the fight that breaks everything and the desperate moment where the heroes fight to have it all back. Cousens paced this novel just like a romantic comedy, which makes the novel all the more engaging. Rom coms are, by nature, light and fresh, but Cousens maintains a perfect balancing act. Not only is this book filled to the brim with humor, but it also has its shining moments of clarity and depth pertaining to loss and memory and materialism. More than anything, it is these discussions that will stick with me after this book. While the story itself was fun and funny, emulating a perfect rom com, I appreciated the way Cousens gave her main character a bigger trial than just finding the right guy. She had to find herself first.
The conversation about materialism, especially, was so subtle, I almost wasn't sure Cousens intended for it to be a bigger part of the story until the end. There is so much tactile engagement in the world—we all have things we love and we all hoard maybe a little too much. Where does that leave the people who come after us? Stuck with our meaningful mementos and meaningless junk? For Laura, her items are all meaningful, meant to be cherished and full of stories to be told. For Ted, it's a chore to have to sort through his father's belongings, an emotional rollercoaster no one would be ready for. By the end of the novel, when Laura splits her necklace in half, I feel like I finally understood exactly what Cousens was trying to share the whole time. While our mementos and objects stay with us, it's still our choice on how to use and share them. Much is the same for the memories of people we never met or will never get the chance to share stories with again. The way Cousens ties all her big topics together (loss, memory, and materialism) is a part of what makes Just Haven't Met You Yet such a magical novel.
I'm currently taking a class about world building in fiction, and so it's something I'm interested in tracking. Especially in a romance novel that include a map at the front, and is littered with old letters and articles! Jersey is a Channel Island, off the north coast of France, a small and homey seeming place based on Cousens's depiction. This entire story, while only being able to happen because Laura grabbed the wrong suitcase at the gate, would really only be possible on the island of Jersey. While tracking her family's history and origins, Laura retraces her mother's steps and finds ways to make her own path on this island. This decision makes a very powerful statement about truth and the ability to build our own world—even if that means tearing ourselves away from everything we thought we knew or wanted. Cousens is based in Jersey, and seems to have taken a similar arc to Laura's: moving to a Channel Island after having stayed in a job for a long time. While romantic and relaxing, making this jump is also terrifying and anxiety-inducing. Cousens is able to embed all of these emotions into the depiction of the island itself, drawing us in with the ways the islanders interact with their environment and with their neighbors. This helps create the strong supporting cast of Gerry, Sandy, and Jasper. Without the island of Jersey, these characters wouldn't exist to help Laura realize what her path is.
I have read a few "Brit-lit" romance novels (Josie Silver, you guessed it!), and I've always enjoyed their lightness, and the way I feel taken out of my own world to witness the love stories on the other side of the globe. I feel like Brit-lit romances have a different quality than American ones—it's not something easily articulated, but definitely something that is appreciated. Some of the conventions of the British English dialect infuse themselves into the language of the novels—because, obviously! I did find myself distracted a few times by the grammar conventions—the amount of commas and elongated sentences (while probably more on par with how people speak) felt slightly less polished than I am used to reading. Still, Cousens's ability to balance shines here, too, even if it isn't what I'm used to. Her easy, natural conversations are paired with metaphors that will make you stop and think awhile. Her figurative language is creative, some times being silly, and other times being so thoughtful and brilliant, you wonder how you've never heard something like that before. While I admit there were some moments I wished things were tightened up with the language, I fell in love with Cousens's ability to tell stories, and can't wait to pick up another one of her novels.
Just Haven't Met You Yet has convinced me to read Cousens's first novel, This Time Next Year. If you want more of Cousens, visit her at her website, sophiecousens.com.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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