The Next Best Thing by Kristan Higgins (2010)

Check out the cover, with its head-cut-off couple, bare feet, mixing bowl and sunshine. Okay, now look past it. Although it seems like a light and charming mass-market contemporary romance, it's a bit more serious and a bit more strongly written than first appears.

Lucy, widowed at a very young age, and enjoying a friend-with-benefits with her brother-in-law, decides she needs to try to find love and marriage again. Who doesn't she consider? That brother-in-law. Meanwhile, the Greek chorus of her also-widowed mother and aunts (the Black Widows) provide running commentary.

This is a wonderfully thoughtful romance with complex characters dealing with issues of grief and forgiveness. The Black Widows add even more humor and charm to the story. Believeable, realistic and charming, this made me want to check out more Kristan Higgins.

Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer (2014)

Terrible name for a pretty good teen novel.

After losing her boyfriend and being unable to get over the grief, Jam is sent to The Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding schoool in Vermont. She gets placed in a Special Topics in English class where she and a few other students study Sylvia Plath intensely. Their unusual teacher gives them each journals to write in, and that writing takes them to very unusual places.

Surprising, suspenseful, and very thoughtful about issues of grief, guilt and blame. But a wildly undescriptive and misleading title.

Extraordinary Means by Robyn Schneider (2015)

With a tagline that reads, "Life goes on until it doesn't," it sounds like this book is going to be another Fault in Our Stars. But it's really quite good. (Full disclosure: I haven't read Fault, but as I haven't liked any of John Green's books, I'm not planning on doing so. I think he's a completely charming person, nonetheless.)

Lane is seventeen, and is just moving into Latham House, a sanitorium for total drug-resistant tuberculosis afflicted teens. It's an interesting and unusual scenario, and really treats the disease seriously--this is no incurable movie disease. 

He meets Sadie and falls for her and her quirky group of friends. Sisman gets teen humor perfectly right--the near constant sarcasm, teasing and jokes (and it's actually funny) and yet the book is poignant without the slightest trace of treacle. Fabulous.

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.

Dear Enemy by Jean Webster (1915)

The sequel to Jean Webster's wildly charming Daddy Long-Legs.

Judy and Jervie have run off and gotten married. Sallie McBride has graduated from college and looking for a job. Judy and Jervie arrange to have her take over the management of the John Grier Home. As Sallie works to make a better orphanage and implement all of her wonderful ideas, she has the grumpy and change-averse Scottish doctor Doctor MacRae to content and spar with.

I loved it as a child, and it still holds up as quite charming. I particularly like Sallie McBride's fix-it, control-enthusiast character. (Because she is VERY FAMILIAR to me.)

However, I think I've figured out why this book is so hard to find and isn't readily in print. There are some pretty hard words about feeble-mindedness and genetics and wiping out the feeble-minded which are pretty shocking to a contemporary reader.

Dumplin' by Julie Murphy (2015)

Willowdean (aka "Dumplin'") Dickson has always had an excellent body image, despite her beauty queen mother's endeavors to help her lose weight.

She's happy and well-adjusted, at least until she gets a job at the local fast-food restaurant and meets Bo, the hot and mysterious cook. She starts to lose her self-confidence and sets out to take it back by entering the legendary local beauty pageant, along with a motley crew of characters.

This young adult novel has endearing, realistic characters and is terribly sweet and funny. Charming, romantic and again, funny as heck.

Tradition! by Barbara Isenberg (2014)

Subtitled: The Highly Improbably, Ultimately Triumphant Broadway-to-Hollywood Story of Fiddler on the Roof, the World's Most Beloved Musical.

 

Highly readable and light story of the making of Fiddler on the Roof, from conception to film to revivals all around the world. 

Filled with lots of little gems about the theater world, from personalities like Jerome Robbins and Zero Mostel (always fascinating) to the fact that Chaim Topol was only in his 30s when he filmed the movie, Isenberg even mentions Lin-Manuel Miranda's using Fiddler as inspiration not only for In the Heights, but for his wedding dance. 

Dishy and interesting, but still poignant and beautifully conveys the universality of the show.

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.

Romancing the Duke by Tessa Dare (2014)

The first in the very delightful Castles Ever After series.

Utterly charming romance novel about the daughter of a famous author who inherits a castle, which just happens to have a reclusive, scarred Duke living in it. 

 Lovely romance with great characters, humor, and very slight and sly nods to contemporary life--blink and you will miss them. So very, very romantic and a little sexy. Yay!

Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self by Alex Tizon (2014)

Alex Tizon is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, formerly for the Los Angeles Times and Seattle Times. He and his family immigrated from the Phillipines when he was a young boy, when he quickly realized that American culture stereotyped Asian men in extremely negative ways. 

At age fourteen, he started keeping files of whenever he ran across something related to Asians—mostly race and manhood and power and sex, he would make a note and file it away. It ended up being two file cabinets full of "evidence" that he had no idea what to do with until many years later, this book.

In this book, he explores the many depictions of Asians in popular culture, and how they affected his own identity. In addition to his own experiences, he travels across the world to rediscover Asian explorers, warriors and great leaders, Asian men throughout history who have been forgotten or ignored by American history books.

This is a candid, engaging and incredibly illuminating memoir that covers a subject that isn't covered much in popular culture: sex and the Asian male.