Joan Conway’s Cereal Lover is probably one of the least-known great chick lit novels. The writing style is very similar to Marian Keyes’s* and the story is a little nutty, but that just makes it more fun. This is one of my favorite books - it’s a quick, funny read.

*So much so that for a while I thought Joan Conway might be a pen name. Then Ms. Keyes came out with her 6th or 7th novel and it was clear she just couldn’t possibly have enough time to write under multiple names.

A misunderstanding over an offensive bet leads to good food and great sex in Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me. The characters are well-defined and the story is fast-paced, making for a fun and sexy novel.

Shannon Olson, the eponymous heroine of Shannon Olson’s Welcome to My Planet (Where English Is Sometimes Spoken) is a mess: bad job, worse credit, crazy family, and terrible taste in men. There are a few funny moments, and the writing is pretty good, but it’s just too far out there - what kind of self-respecting woman would allow such a loser boyfriend into her life, let alone let him to treat her like that, repeatedly? And I know this is picky, but I was very distracted by the fact that the author named her allegedy fictional character after herself. I sure hope everything else was made up, because it’s a pretty sad story.

Is there anything more fun than reminiscing about old movies with new friends? In Looking for Andrew McCarthy, Jenny Colgan not only offers a great chick lit novel (girl gets dumped and goes on an impossible quest across the US), but also a look back at all those brat pack movies that I loved (and some that I hated). She makes snide comments that I might have made and laughs in all the same places I did. It’s so much fun!

Animal Husbandry, by Laura Zigman, is one of the wackier books I’ve ever read - chick lit or otherwise. When Jane Goodall (no relation) gets dumped, she turns to the animal kingdom to try to make sense of her boyfriend’s behavior, and draws a number of startling and interesting parallels between animals and humans. It’s a weird but worthwhile read.

You may have noticed that the books I’m reviewing aren’t exactly hot off the presses. This is because I started this blog many years after I started reading chick lit, and for now I’m just trying to remember all of the books I’ve loved and hated. It’s also because I get most of my books through PaperbackSwap, and because I live in France. But I’m a voracious reader, so if any of you out there have written or know of good chick lit (new or old) that I should read, I will happily accept review copies. I can’t promise a glowing review, only an honest one based on how I liked it. Just reply to this message and I’ll email you my info. (If the cost of shipping to France puts you off, I have an address in the US you can use, but it will take a month for the book to get to me.)

One of the earliest chick lit books, The Trials of Tiffany Trott, by Isabel Wolff, is also one of the most fun. Tiffany is 37 and still looking for Mr. Right in a quest that leads her to classified ads, blind dates, Club Med, and pretty much anywhere else single men might conceivably hang out. Very funny and a pleasure to read!

Fiona Walker’s French Relations has a lot of good points, and one scene in particular is laugh-until-you-bawl funny. But it has some bad ones too, like obvious and repeated foreshadowing (I think I counted 10 mentions of the same event) and an over-reliance on puns for laughs. They can be funny, sure, but that sort of humor starts to get old really quickly. But it’s a fun read, and has a sequel. I love books with sequels for the same reason I like TV more than movies - I like to stay invested in the same characters for as long as possible.

You’ve probably noticed by now that I have my own rating system for the chick lit I read and review: the Chick Literate Heart Awards. I rate books with 0 to 5 hearts, and there’s a graphic to go with each one. You can click on the graphic to see a list of all the books with the same ranking, and I have an article about my system here: Chick Literate Heart Awards.

I can’t believe Jennifer Weiner’s In Her Shoes was actually made into a movie - actually I can. It’s for people who like to laugh at (not with) other people. One of the main characters, Maggie, is mean, spiteful, selfish, greedy, and a bitch (not to put too fine a point on it). Oh, and she’s thin and lovely. Her sister, Rose, is kind, generous, forgiving, yada, yada, plain, and fat. Maybe it’s because I only have brothers, but I just can’t buy into a story where one sister could be so horrible (steal repeatedly from your sister and sleep with her boyfriend, anyone?) and the other would forgive her so easily. The mean-but-pretty and kind-but-fat stereotype is just lame, unbelievable characters abound, and I couldn’t find any redeeming qualities anywhere in the book.