Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella

A co-worker said to me “You’ll like this book. There’s a ghost in it”. She was wrong. I didn’t like it. I *loved* it.  When Lara Lington’s great Aunt Sadie passes away her parents force her to attend the funeral. It’s a small gathering, very small. When you die at 105 you haven’t a lot of friends left.  When Lara hears a voice in her head, shouting about a missing necklace and asking her to stop the funeral, she does. A woman, her newly deceased Aunt Sadie appears to her as a young woman in her twenties. She begs Lara to find her missing dragonfly necklace. What follows is a delightful story. I’ve you’ve ever felt the presence of a deceased loved one, you’ll enjoy it. Meanwhile Lara is recovering from a broken romance that she’d still like to pursue. However Aunt Sadie has found a man she thinks is better suited to Lara. She even has Lara dressing like a flapper and learning the Charleston. Then there Lara’s uncle, the creator of the Lington coffee shops. How did he get the money to finance them? One of my favourite parts of the story is when Aunt Sadie explains to Lara why she appears as a woman in her twenties. She explains that it is how she’s always seen herself and that the body everyone else sees is just “cladding”. I particularly liked this as I’d heard a variation of it many years ago from a former local author Miss E. Marion Henderson, who was a dedicated library volunteer. Miss Henderson told me “This is just the envelope I come in”.