BOL Review: Opportunity Knocks by Alison Sweeney

Television actress Sweeney (Days of Our Lives) offers an insider’s perspective in this chick-lit offering. Alex is a green 25-year-old makeup artist in L.A., willing to take on any job she can in order to gain experience and build her base. She lucks out one day when she just happens to be hanging around the set of a daytime talk show at the very moment the guest star’s usual makeup artist is rushed to the ER with appendicitis. It’s no ordinary guest—it’s Hillary, of Everyday Life with Hillary P. (think Martha Stewart, but bitchier)...Read the full review on Booklist Online!

BOL Review: Meternity by Meghann Foye

Singleton Liz, an editor at a parenting magazine, is getting tired of taking on all the extra work from the moms in the office. She’s particularly annoyed that the editor who got the promotion Liz was in line for is constantly leaving work early so she can deal with her family life. When the boss thinks that Liz is pregnant—he sees her using a pregnancy-countdown app that she’s downloaded for an article—Liz decides this might be the way to an easier workload and perhaps even some maternity leave, a “meternity.” The plan involves a series of fake baby bumps, which Liz just barely gets away with...Read the full review on Booklist Online!

A Vintage Affair by Isabel Wolff

After reading a lot of CRAP women's novels in the last year or so, I was delighted to finally get some good stuff this year (be sure to see my posts about Katherine Center and Allison Winn Scotch for examples of the good stuff!)

As you know, I do a Summer Beach Reads Roundup for Library Journal. This year, there was a book that I enjoyed so much, I asked my editor to please let it run as a separate review instead of the shorter reviews that get into the article.

Isabel Wolff's A Vintage Affair has totally renewed my faith in women's fiction (British women's fic to be specific!) I've read several of her chick lit novels before, but they were from the early 2000s - to be honest I hadn't even realized she was still writing. Turns out, she just hasn't been published in the US for a while. Thanks, Bantam, for bringing her back to us!

Wolff, Isabel. A Vintage Affair. Bantam. Jul. 2010. c.257p. ISBN 978-0-553-80783-7.

Vintage clothing lover Phoebe opens her own resale boutique in London's Blackheath neighborhood, meeting much success. She's grateful for the hustle and bustle the shop provides, because it lets her forget her guilt over the death of her best childhood friend, not to mention that she just left her fiancé at the altar. When the elderly Mrs. Bell contracts with Phoebe to sell her entire wardrobe, Phoebe finds herself reeled in by the story of Mrs. Bell's childhood friend, thought lost in the horrors of the Holocaust. Additionally, our heroine's got not one but two new suitors keeping her on her toes. Sounds like a lot, but Wolff manages to keep every story line interesting and on track, including plenty of fashion talk. VERDICT:  Fans of British chick lit, rejoice! (And readers who aren't already fans, prepare to become such.) With a wide cast of realistic, wonderfully drawn characters, a deft blending of the past with the present, and a seemingly effortless managing of several plots at once, this charming novel by the author of Behaving Badly and The Trials of Tiffany Trott deserves a place in all popular fiction collections.


Review from the May 1, 2010 issue of Library Journal. Copyright 2010 Library Journal/Rebecca Vnuk.

The Article that started it all...

Here's a link to the chick lit article I wrote for Library Journal back in 2005, which was my entryway to becoming a library expert on women's fiction (editors at Libraries Unlimited had come across my article and that led them to asking me to write the 2 books for them!)


Hip Lit for Hip Chicks

Older titles, but still relevant info.

"Chick lit offers fun, entertaining reading—don't go looking for timeless prose, philosophical musings, or unpredictable plots here!—but that does not completely explain its allure. The genre's aim of eliciting a response of "I'm exactly like that" or "That just happened to me!" has really struck a chord with women in their twenties and thirties who want to be reassured that they are not alone in screwing up their lives—or that screwing up doesn't preclude a happy ending."  Read More...

NYT Talks Chick Lit

More Gumption, Less Gucci
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/fashion/13CHICK.html?pagewanted=1&ref=books

"And yet, even the most lurid accounts of conspicuous consumption have never been entirely escapist, said Mallory Young, the editor, with Suzanne Ferriss, of “Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction” (Routledge, 2005). “Chick lit usually responds through comedy to real situations confronting real women,”Ms. Young maintains. Unlike romance novels, chick lit “recognizes and responds to the world outside,” she said. "

NPR talks Chick Lit

Interesting piece on NPR about how the recession is affecting Chick Lit... or is it?

Is the Recession Hurting Women's Fiction? Or Just Hurting Shoe Fiction?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2009/08/is_the_recession_hurting_women.html

"Because shoe fiction was never a reality-based genre, ever. EVER. If you were ever inclined to sit down and read Confessions Of A Shopaholic in the first place, you're not going to turn it down and choose Confessions Of A Costco Bulk Purchaser Of Cheerios instead."