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 […]
Tag: 5 hearts award
The Trials of Tiffany Trott
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. […]
Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married
I love, love, love Marian Keyes’s Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married. Though it’s not perfect (see spoilers, below), I enjoy the story and particularly certain scenes so much that I’m still able to reread it regularly and enjoy it just as much each time I do. I really like Lucy, and overall the book is […]
Just Friends
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 […]
Coffee and Kung Fu
Though I don’t care at all about Kung Fu, I loved Karen Brichoux’s Coffee and Kung Fu. The (brief) comparisons to martial arts movies are fun and even interesting, but it’s the author’s descriptions and dialogues that really make this book stand out. One line in particular, which I can’t remember exactly so I won’t […]
Talking to Addison
I love wacky books, and Talking to Addison, by Jenny Colgan, doesn’t disappoint. The narrator lives with a bunch of misfits, one of whom she is determined to befriend, despite his evident lack of interest in talking to her. The whole book is very funny, but there are a few truly hilarious, tears-rolling-down-your-face moments, and […]
Honeymoon
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]