Isabel Wolff will always remain one of my favorite chick lit authors, even though I was incredibly disappointed by her third book, Out of the Blue. It’s the story of a woman whose husband has an affair and leaves her, sort of, but never manages to completely make the break – and she doesn’t really [...]

If The Edge of Reason, the sequel to Bridget Jones’s Diary, left you wanting more, then you’re in luck: Helen Fielding did another series of columns which are available online. (Or maybe you’re not as lame as I am and already read them when they were published 3 years ago.) Anyway, it’s a little bit [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

The second (and final) Bridget Jones book, Helen Fielding’s The Edge of Reason, isn’t as good as the first, but it’s definitely worth a read or five. The timing is off in places (e.g., Magda’s pregnancy/new baby in the two books) and some of the situations are a little too outrageous, but all in all [...]

It’s set in New York, but I would definitely classify Just Friends, by Robyn Sisman, as English chick lit. Either way, the whole book is fun and there are a couple of truly hilarious scenes. The characters and, more importantly, the various mix-ups and misunderstandings are believable, which makes them all the funnier. This is [...]

Jane Green’s first book, Straight Talking, is not her best. Tasha is both shallow and selfish, and I couldn’t root for her no matter how hard I tried. At one point she found out something hurtful and I actually thought “serves you right!” (She said as much to herself, too, but that still wasn’t enough [...]

If you like books with a mix of comedy and tragedy, then Anna Maxted’s Getting Over It is just the ticket. Helen has a terrible track record with men, and at first the death of her father barely fazes her. But as the story unfolds, she develops closer relationships with a few different people and [...]

I really liked parts of Katie Fforde’s Living Dangerously, and because of that I’ve read it several times. Polly, the protagonist, is 35 and happy to live on her own. She seems like a perfectly pleasant person. However, the implausability of it all eventually gets to me.
SPOILERS

Honeymoon, by Amy Jenkins, is one of my very favorite chick lit novels. It’s both funny and clever, and I felt a strong connection with the heroine and several other characters. She’s about to get married, even though she hasn’t seen the Love of Her Life in years. Her fiancé is a good guy but [...]