cover image Party Girl

Party Girl

Sarah Mason, . . Ballantine, $12.95 (321pp) ISBN 978-0-345-46956-4

At the start of Brit Mason's amusing latest (after Society Girls ), Isabel "Izzy" Serranti is newly dumped, plumped and certain that her future as an event planner is in danger. Family connections net her the bash of a lifetime, but the big event—a swank charity ball—is set to take place at Pantiles, the ancestral estate of her childhood best friend turned tormentor, Simon Monkwell, England's hottest financier. Everything gets turned on its head, though, when Simon confesses that the estate is a financial disaster; he needs Izzy's help to spruce up Pantiles to reassure his American investors. Mason borrows from Helen Fielding: Izzy frets over her weight, her ill-conceived outfits and her clumsy shenanigans; much like Mark Darcy, Simon is disciplined, dangerously handsome and enamored with a clumsy, pudgy girl. Mason's creativity comes through in her winningly eccentric cast of secondary characters, but there are too many of them and their attendant complications: Izzy's parents fly in from Tokyo to explain an old family scandal, Pantile's housekeeper's estranged husband stops by for a pint and Izzy's best friend admits he's shagging her sister. Kiss Simon, Izzy, and get on with it! Eventually she does, in this fun if familiar story. Agent, Kathy Anderson. (Dec.)