The Girl Most Likely – Rebecca Sparrow

When she was seventeen, Rachel Hill was set up for success – prefect, good marks and a life plan. Five years later everything was still on track – an Honours degree under her belt and a glamorous job as a travel writer, the only thing missing was a ring on her left hand. Half a decade on and Rachel’s not quite where she expected – no longer features editor for a prestigious magazine, Rachel’s a part-time nanny for obnoxious six-year-old Alex, house-sitting for her parents in her childhood home, and has been roped into running for the Miss Brisbane pageant. And she still hasn’t managed to tell her parents she got married in Vegas.
The long-distance relationship that was full of promise, that made her resign her job, fell apart and Rachel can’t quite manage to tell anyone except her best friend Zoë. When tidying through her old bedroom, Rachel finds a list of “things to achieve before I turn 28” she wrote when she was seventeen. With a bit of fudging she’s met all of them, except one. Determined to get at least one thing right, Rachel vows to play “Jessica’s Theme” from The Man From Snowy River by the end of October. And in the process she manages to fix her life up.
I quite enjoyed Rachel’s journey, but there were a number of things that I found irritating about The Girl Most Likely, chief of which was the unnecessary stylistic decision to render everyone but Rachel’s speech in quote-free italics:

“Hey you, good work! You were fantastic.”
Did you see me wave, Rachel?
“I certainly did! You were the prettiest girl up there!”
Look what Matt gave me, she says…
“When did he?”
There he is!

And so on. It was distracting, annoyed me every single time, and contributed nothing to the novel. As I read it I thought it was a little like newbies on message boards who think the reason nobody else is writing in ALL CAPS is because they haven’t thought of it.
That aside, though, The Girl Most Likely is a fun and frothy addition to the genre. Sparrow injects genuinely amusing touches lightly through the novel. Her description of Alex’s cat, Snowy, “looking like he’s had a hard night out at the Sydney Mardi Gras” after Alex had at him with tinsel and fuchsia nail polish, was great. Rachel’s narration of proofing lesbian Zoë’s attempts at writing what she thinks is straight erotic fiction (“but “would actually be classed as porn. Very bad, dirty porn... the type of porn that would turn the stomach’s of the judges who read Zoë’s entries”) is another highlight.
The romance rings true, the hero flawed but genuine, and the obstacles are relatively believable – even the main barrier, Rachel failing to disclose her marital status, is handled well.
All in all this is a particularly good first novel, and I’m interested to see what else Ms Sparrow has produced since this was published in 2000. - Alex