Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert (2019)

LOVED this chick lit about Chloe Brown, chronically ill web designer and grump who sees her life flash before her eyes and decides that she needs a good bucket list. 

"Red" Morgan, her super hot building superintendent, gets inadvertently involved and despite all Chloe's efforts, they embark on her list. Of course, Red has secrets and baggage of his own, primarily his artistic career and heartbreak. 

Beautifully written, with a lovely slow burn and smoking love scenes, this is a lovely romance with rich secondary characters, a beautifully diverse cast, a heroine who is curvy and a super hot but sweet romantic lead. Delightful.

Don't You Forget About Me by Mhairi McFarlane (2019)

Really fun but substantial chick lit about a woman who is a bit lost who gets a job as a barmaid for her high school boyfriend. 

Strong, vivid characters abound and the romance itself is a lovely slow burn. 

Really quite good.

One in a Million by Lindsey Kelk (2018)

Really liked this adorable Brit Chick Lit about Annie, who owns a social media start up with her best friends. She makes a bet with her landlords that she can make someone Instagram famous in 30 days and the random stranger selected is hapless historian Dr. Samuel Page, whose girlfriend has just dumped him. 

In addition to the social media bet, Annie goes about putting Sam through Boyfriend Bootcamp, which includes a makeover, social skills, conversation and getting him into the outside world. The delight of this book is in the charming characters and their very realistic relationships, especially between Annie and her friends and family. And the relationship between Annie and Sam is a lovely slow burn. 

Am definitely checking out more Lindsey Kelk books! And she has a bunch, yay!

Read Bottom Up by Neel Shah and Skye Chatham (2015)

Lovely, unique novel written in email and text from the perspective of two characters meeting and falling in love. And then struggling in the relationship.

Shah wrote Elliot's perspective and Chatham wrote Madeleine's as well as their conversations with their best friends. This lends the novel a unique authenticity and reality.

Charming and very relatable. Unfortunately, the only book written by these two together. :( 

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty (2018)

Every time Liane Moriarty comes up, I feel a little glow of having 'discovered' her with her first novel Three Wishes (2004!) Every single novel since then has been a treat.

Rich characterizations and complex relationships in unique situations are Moriarty's stock in trade. This novel is no different and has a particularly unique setting. Nine strangers meet at a health resort. Secrets unfold. Unexpected things happen. AND there's a kickass, menopausal, romance writer heroine called Frances. 

Endearing, absorbing, and so readable.

Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren (2018)

I so, so love Christina Lauren. Hazel is a kind of wacky woman, who admits that she's way too much. She gets back in touch with her crush years later, Josh, but is really worried that she'll become too much for him as well. So they try and set each other up with other people, which does not work at all. Because they can't deny their attraction and affection! 

Love it. Slow build, but hot love scenes, plus wonderfully rich characters. Heart heart heart.

"The way Emily describes it: when I meet someone I love, I become an octopus and wind my tentacles around their heart, tighter and tighter until they can't deny they love me just the same." (p. 9)

"Dinner parties at my apartment consist of paper plates, boxed win, and the last three minutes before serving featuring me running around like a maniac because I burned the lasagna, insisting I DON'T NEED ANY HELP JUST SIT DOWN AND RELAX."

It's Not Me, It's You by Mhairi McFarlane (2015)

Perfectly enjoyable chick lit about a thirtyish woman who proposes to her boyfriend, finds out he's seeing someone else, and takes off to London to get away. 

She gets a job with a dodgy PR firm, gets involved with an investigative reporter and is being wooed back by her boyfriend. Much drama and delightful British slang ensues. She also writes a graphic novel, but that feels very much like an afterthought.

This Could Change Everything by Jill Mansell (2018)

As I've said a million times, I love Jill Mansell because you don't know which of the players will end up together. Plus, such lovely rich characters. 

The book kicks off with Essie having a joke round robin letter sent to her entire address book, which results in her beau ditching her and getting fired (by beau's mother). But she soon finds a home with extravagant character Zillah and finding a job in a nearby bar, run by a very handsome Lucas. Much entanglement and complication ensues until everyone ends up with the right person. V. sweet.

Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren (2018)

I love Christina Lauren. This is a lovely, multilayered novel that wanders back and forth in time, telling the story of Macy and Elliot, childhood sweethearts who meet again many years after something separated them. Lauren does a beautiful job of keeping the suspense up of what separated them and in telling their story since then. 

Also, ELLIOT IS TOTALLY JASON MANTZOUKAS. He is TOTALLY Mantzoukas. That's all I'm saying. Sweet and romantic and endearing and emotional and complex. Love.

Class Mom by Laurie Gelman (2017)

Picked this up off a cart at the library purely for the cover and the spine, which basically says "Ass Mom." (lol!)

Jen, formerly band groupie with two children, one of whom may or may not have been fathered by Michael Hutchence, is married with a five-year-old son and has been recruited as Max's class mom. She sends snarky emails to the parents, gets involved in kindergarten parent politics, and deals with the emotions of being an aging 'cool girl.' 

So readable, so delightful. Even though she's a well-off white woman without a job--which is a very tiring genre--I still liked it. Here's an example of the cuteness: She calls her husband's home gym "Ron's Gym and Tan." Anyhoo. Cute.

Update: Apparently, there are two more in this series. Who knew? Now I do!

Roomies by Christina Lauren (2017)

Romantic comedy about a woman who is obsessed with a busker at her subway station who gets attacked one day and is saved by him. In order to try to repay the debt, she gets him an audition with her uncle's Broadway show. It's a match made in heaven until they discover he is in America illegally, as he overstayed his visa. Enter a marriage of convenience. 

Funny but a bit deeper than your average chick lit, and I LOVED the Broadway setting portrayed pretty realistically. Very endearing.

Meet Me at Beachcomber Bay by Jill Mansell (2017)

I always adore Jill Mansell and sometimes you just need to read a book about charming people falling in love, despite a few hiccups, in a beautiful British location. 

Let's see: There's a girl with a weird name, who has a contentious relationship with her stepsister, who meets a man on a plane, but loses contact, then he shows up as her stepsister's boyfriend but there's still attraction. So girl with weird name pretends to be dating her boss. who has his own hopeless (seeming!) love affair, PLUS a whole thing with his birth mom. Everything turns out beautifully, sigh.

CLEMENCY! The name is Clemency. Well, yeah.

Warm Bodies - Isaac Marion (2011)

I picked up this zombie romantic comedy purely because they made a movie of it and the trailer looked cute. By the way, isn't that cover great?

This is a very endearing zombie romantic comedy--yes, zombie romantic comedy--that tells the story of R, a zombie wandering around in a zombie vs. survivalist humans world. The story is told from R's point of view, and there are many laugh out loud moments. When he eats the brain of a young human and falls for his girlfriend Julie, it gets a bit more serious.

But throughout, it still has lovely touches of humor. Marion does a beautiful job of getting inside R's head and still showing what he looks and sounds like from the outside. It's thoughtful and philosophical about the end of the world in a way that most zombie, post-apocalyptic novels don't bother with--certainly not zombie movies anyway. R, Julie and her friend Nora are very endearing characters as are the complex leaders of the humans.

Really a great book and rather gentle and sweet for a book about zombies.

My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix (2016)

In 1988, Abby and Gretchen are in high school and are best friends. After a experiment with LSD after which Gretchen goes missing for an evening, Gretchen comes back and seems very different and very wrong. Abby tries to figure out what is wrong with her friend, and tries to get help from family, friends and other grownups, to no avail. 

As the dust jacket says, "Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?" Filled with pop culture references that will delight readers of a certain age (my age, btw), this is also a great horror novel and a great novel about friendship. It's an unexpected combination that works beautifully. 

Surprisingly insightful into the minds of teenage girls and all the trials and tribulations of friendship and of being a teen. It also has a yearbook design motif (probably used since Hendrix's Horrorstor used the IKEA catalog so effectively), which is a bit superfluous in this novel. Nonetheless, Hendrix powerfully captures just how powerless you are when you're a teen.

I adored this:

"Abby Rivers and Gretchen Lang were best friends, on and off, for seventy-five years, and there aren't many people who can say that. They weren't perfect. They didn't always get along. They screwed up. They acted like assholes. They fought, they fell out, they patched things up, they drove each other crazy, and they didn't make it to Halley's Comet. But they tried."

Aw!

If You Only Knew by Kristan Higgins (2015)

Marvelous romance novel, which could be classified as a regular novel.

The novel is about two sisters: Rachel and Jenny. Jenny is divorced, still good friends with her ex and moving to upstate New York to open her bridal design store. Rachel is married to Adam and has three adorable toddler triplet girls. However, the course of divorce and marriage never runs smooth. 

The beauty in this novel is in the rich characters and relationships, from the one-upping in unhappiness that their widowed mother delights in, the secret about their father only Jenny knows, and Jenny's new handsome super. 

Rich and realistic and touching and hard and sweet all at once.

The Geek Girl and the Scandalous Earl by Gina Lamm (2013)

Don't let the cheesy cover and title fool you. This is an adorable time travel novel about gamer/geek girl Jamie who gets sucked through an antique bureau 200 years into the past.

She pops into the world of the Earl of Dunnington, who is far more imperious that would appear on this hilarious cover. In fact, there's more than a little of Richard Armitage's John Thornton from North and South in him. They keep mentioning Colin Firth, but he's far more Armitage. 

This romance novel is cute and funny. Lamm blends the two times together quite well and has some pretty good characterization. And don't forget the smoking-hot love scenes. So good that I immediately requested every Gina Lamm book in our collection.

The Knockoff by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza (2015)

I love few things more than a dishy novel about the world of magazine publishing. It brings me back to my chick lit days! 

Imogen Tate returns from a medical leave of absence to her job as editor-in-chief at Glossy magazine, and her former assistant (Eve) is now running the social media arm of the magazine. Imogen doesn't know Twitter from Tumblr, so conflict and drama and delicious behind the scenes ensues. 

Pretty darn fun.

Happily Ever After by Elizabeth Maxwell (2014)

I love a book that leaps off the shelf at me at the library and asks me to take it home. This book was misshelved while I was looking for something else and it leapt into my hand. 

Sadie Fuller is a single mother, and a romance novelist who writes erotica under a pseudonym. Meanwhile, she's raising her daughter, dealing with her gay ex-husband, and dodging the PTA. When she runs into her newest romantic lead at Target, things get interesting. But not in the way that you might think. 

It's a fabulously original unexpected story with rich, realistic characters in a magical situation. So much quiet, dry humor. I love a scene when her ex forbids her to do something, then they pause to laugh hysterically at the thought of him forbidding her to do anything. 

Funny, realistic and delightful. I love a book where I'm not even done with it and I'm already looking for more work by the author. A total hidden gem, ala Tuscany for Beginners or Nancy's Theory of Style. Adorable.

Movie Star: A Novel by Lizzie Pepper by Hilary Liftin (2015)

If you've ever been even mildly intrigued by the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes marriage/fiasco and the world of Hollywood and Scientology, you'll love this novel.

It's a marvelously dishy roman a clef fictional memoir by "Lizzie Pepper", a young actress who marries a megastar actor who is involved with a powerful Hollywood church/cult. Sound familiar? 

It's wonderfully Inside Hollywood not only in the Scientology scandal aspect but as how superstardom really works. It's a fascinating look at how the whole process works and a great slant on an often-speculated about, complicated relationship. Fun and SO dishy.

Thank You, Goodnight: A Novel by Andy Abramowitz (2015)

Teddy Tremble was the singer of a band that had a one-hit wonder in the 1990s. Almost forty, he's settling into life as a lawyer when he gets a call from old friend, which brings him to a small town in Switzerland. And guess what? His band is HUGE among a quirky group of young people in this town, which rekindles his love for creating music. 

I love the way Abramowitz writes about making music--it's so wonderfully evocative. His voice is also tremendously funny and has a great turn of phrase. It's one of those novels that you want to read aloud to anyone who will listen. Unexpected and lovely fun.