please help me find this book because it is slowly driving me mad. I’m not sure it was even that good but I started thinking about it about a year ago and despite endless googling, asking AI and even posting in the Reddit forum for lost books - nothing! I just need to know the title for the sake of my sanity!
So. Published early 2000s I think. Contemporary fiction I guess. Around the time that Marian Keyes was massive and that Shopholic series as well.
Protagonist lives on Staten Island (I think) and catches the ferry to Manhattan every day where she works as a typist for some big company (finance?). She doesn’t have a lot of friends and lives with her mum and step dad whom she doesn’t have a great relationship with. She is sort of on the fringes of the groups at the office but is included. She’s gets the opportunity to go on a business trip to London with her boss who everyone in the office has a crush on but is a known playboy.
she goes on the trip to London, stays in a fancy hotel and sleeps with the boss. Whilst there she decides stay and surprises him by saying she isn’t going back. She cashes in her ticket.
she uses the money from her ticket to stay in a cheap B&B in London. Gets a job in a corner shop and tutors the corner shop owners daughter/babysits. Along the way she meets a woman who owns a knitting shop and also works there helping her out. The knitting lady has a stroke and her son comes to look after her - initially he doesn’t like the protagonist but they end up married.
does any one recognise this at all? Cover was blue/purple I think and had stars on, maybe Big Ben? Quite a long book IIRC for this type of novel. Not by any of the popular authors of the genre at this time like Tilly Bagshaw, Jenny Colgan, Lisa Jewell etc.
any help would be appreciated!