Though it’s not Jennifer Crusie’s first book, Welcome to Temptation is the first one I read. It’s a little bit more Harlequin-romancy than most chick lit, but it has some likeable characters and some unlikeable ones that are fairly believable, and the story was fun – there are a couple of love stories, some good […]
Watermelon
If you were to take a crash course on chick lit, Watermelon, by Marian Keyes, would be required reading. This début novel begins with Claire in the hospital, where she has just given birth to her first child a few minutes before her husband arrives to tell her that he’s leaving her for another woman. […]
What is chick lit?
It’s kind of hard to define chick lit. The early books, like Bridget Jones’s Diary and Watermelon, tended to be light-hearted. The women might be flawed and undergo some traumatic events, but they usually had a pretty good sense of humor about it all. These are the books I adore. The phenomenal success of Helen […]
Otherwise Engaged: A Novel
The first American chick lit I read was Otherwise Engaged: A Novel, by Suzanne Finnamore. While the story progresses from engagement to wedding, it’s not really about that so much as it is about relationships and life changes. It’s a bit more serious than, say, Bridget Jones’s Diary, but it’s also more real, and it’s […]
The Making of Minty Malone
Once I’d read Bridget Jones’s Diary I was dying for similar novels, but the term “chick lit” didn’t exist yet and I had no way of searching for them. (There were of course other books out there, but they were pretty much all in England, and I didn’t discover them until later.) So it was […]
Bridget Jones’s Diary
No serious discussion of chick lit can take place without mention of Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding, which pretty much started the entire genre. There’s nothing I can say about this book that hasn’t been said – it’s side-splittingly funny, and it’s playful and clever and escapist and just downright fun. It’s the first […]
Chick lit fanatic
I’ve decided that I’m ready to share my most embarrassing secret with the world. I read all the time, but not literature, or New York Times bestsellers, or even Oprah’s book club selections. My favorite books are chick lit, and while they might not be intellectual or impressive, they’re funny and entertaining, and I can’t […]