1) "Anna and the French Kiss" by Stephanie Perkins
Since her father’s Nicholas Sparks–like novels have been turned into blockbuster movies and he now has the means (and status) to give her culture, Anna Oliphant finds herself uprooted from her Atlanta home to become the newest senior at the School of America in Paris. Her seemingly enviable situation is offset by her inability to speak French, her fear of venturing off school property and a possible romantic interest back home. But then the young film critic meets gorgeous, heart-stopping classmate Étienne St. Clair, who has a sexy British accent and offers to show her around Paris—and who also has a serious girlfriend at a local university. Perkins’s debut surpasses the usual chick-lit fare with smart dialogue, fresh characters and plenty of tingly interactions, all set amid pastries, parks and walks along the Seine in arguably the most romantic city in the world. Sarah Dessen fans will welcome another author who gracefully combines love and realism, as Anna’s story is as much about finding and accepting herself as it is about finding love. Très charmante. (Chick lit. 13 & up)
2) "The Boy Next Door" by Meg Cabot
Gossip columnist falls for gorgeous guy.
Melissa Fuller, 20-something scandalmonger for a New York newspaper, is nicer than most Manhattanites, since she hails from a small town in Illinois. She actually likes her parents, has never attempted suicide, and is sincerely interested in the celebrities she writes about. Her woes are on the wee side: pesky workplace rules about punctuality, a grumpy boss, a nervous about-to-be-married girlfriend. Her boyfriend, reporter Aaron Spender, just dumped her for a luscious foreign correspondent, to Mel’s chagrin. But she has more important things to think about when Helen Friedlander, her neighbor, is whacked on the head by an unknown intruder and left for dead. Apparently the old lady’s only relative is a famous male model and photographer on assignment in Key West. Gee whiz, how is Mel ever going to find Max Friedlander? If she can’t, she’ll have to walk Helen’s Great Dane and take care of those crazy cats all by herself until the old lady is out of the hospital. Ooh! Looks like Max just came back and he is soooooooooooo handsome, even though he has a playboy reputation. If only Mel knew that he was really John Trent, total dream dude, responsible human being, and scion of a wealthy midwestern family. John is returning a favor he owes his scurrilous buddy Max by pretending to be him while Max romps in the surf with a silly supermodel. Mel is smitten, though her girlfriend frets, parents cluck, and grumpy boss sounds off in the e-mails that comprise this cutesy romance. All counsel caution, as Mel begins to suspect that her new boyfriend just might be Helen’s attacker . . . or a transvestite killer . . . or a copycat criminal. As chick sleuths go, she hasn’t got a clue.
Clean-scrubbed, girlish romp from the author of the Princess Diaries YA series—as well as seven historical romancers under the pseudonym of Patricia Cabot.
3) "Can You Keep A Secret?" by Sophie Kinsella
The author of the Shopaholic trilogy (Shopaholic Ties the Knot, 2002, etc.) runs out of ideas.
Emma Corrigan, a heroine who seems about 11 years old, has a few giggly little secrets. Just between us superannuated schoolgirls, she hasn’t the faintest idea what NATO is, and she has never, ever told her boyfriend Connor that she actually weighs 128 pounds, not 118. Oh, and her Kate Spade bag is a fake. And she loves sweet sherry. Yes, the list of endearing fibs is long and equally trivial, but she confesses most of it to a business-suited American on a plane. He’s not really listening, is he? Oh, dear, what a dreadful pickle Emma gets herself into! As luck would have it, the handsome stranger, Jack Harper, turns out to be her new boss! “Look at him! He’s got limos and flunkies, and a great, big important company that makes millions every year!” Whatever will Emma do? Blush, simper, and have a little vodka—though she doesn’t seem old enough to drink without a sippy cup and a pink-kitten-printed bib. Good thing she has the sort of job where fib-telling is what she does, really—marketing things like sports drinks and energy bars and petroleum products requires the truth to be bent just a teeny-weeny bit, doesn’t it? And when she realizes, thanks to an elderly relative, that the energy bars don’t stick to dentures, she comes up with a simply brilliant idea that just might land her that big promotion! Maybe she’ll buy that smart new suit after all. But her personal life is in a dreadful muddle and Emma is ready to cry real tears—when Jack steps in to make things all better.
Just plain dopey. But Kinsella’s name plus a bubblegum-pink cover will attract the fans.
4) "Welcome to Temptation" by Jennifer Crusie
If small towns are filled with heroes like Crusie’s (Crazy for You, p. 163, etc.), then romance readers may begin to crowd the highways. Sophie Dempsey, the “daughter of a thousand felons,” and her sister, Amy, come to the town of Temptation, Ohio, to film an “audition tape” for Clea Whipple, a local girl turned porn star whose anchorman husband has run off with her inheritance and refuses to give it back. Sophie is one of the only honest, if repressed, members of a family of charming cons and thieves. After her mother’s death, she raised her sister and her brother, Davy, who now specializes in parting shady businessmen from their dubious gains. Their father, a guy with a long rap sheet, is permanently on the lam. In the upright town of Temptation, the major bones of contention appear to be the painting of the water tower, which looks like a large erect phallus, and the ordering of new streetlights. These rather boring proceedings are presided over by Phineas Tucker, whose silly name hides a really hunky “town boy”—a single father who owns the local bookstore. Phin, immediately taken with Sophie’s lower lip, seduces her with promises of slightly kinky sex. Sophie hasn’t had any good “head-banging sex” in quite a while, if ever, and is inspired by Phin’s technique, using their love scenes as a template for Clea’s video. Crusie seems to have perfected the fan-delighting art of erotic, comic, and yet homey sex, with the understanding that the head-banging sex is made possible by that head-banging other word: love. Into this jokey, soft-core mix, Crusie inserts modern-romance’s de-rigueur murder and hometown violence, the working out of which threatens to derail her plot as well as the appeal of roadside America. Nevertheless, with her third seriously pleasing hardcover—bright, funny, sexy, and wise—it’s time to welcome Crusie into the pantheon of top-flight romance writers.
5) "Bridget Jones's Diary" by Helen Fielding
Newspaper columnist Fielding’s first effort, a bestseller in Britain, lives up to the hype: This year in the life of a single woman is closely observed and laugh-out-loud funny. Bridget, a thirtysomething with a midlevel publishing job, tempers her self-loathing with a giddy (if sporadic) urge toward self-improvement: Every day she tallies cigarettes smoked, alcohol —units—consumed, and pounds gained or lost. At Una Alconbury’s New Year’s Day Curry Buffet, her parents and their friends hover as she’s introduced to an eligible man, Mark Darcy. Mark is wearing a diamond-patterned sweater that rules him out as a potential lust object, but Bridget’s reflexive rudeness causes her to ruminate on her own undesirability and thus to binge on chocolate Christmas-tree decorations. But in the subsequent days, she cheers herself up with fantasies of Daniel, her boss’s boss, a handsome rogue with an enticingly dissolute air. After a breathless exchange of e-mail messages about the length of her skirt, Daniel asks for her phone number, causing Bridget to crown herself sex goddess. . . until she spends a miserable weekend staring at her silent phone. By chanting “aloof, unavailable ice-queen” to herself, she manages to play it cool long enough to engage Daniel’s interest, but once he’s her boyfriend, he spends Sundays with the shades pulled watching TV—and is quickly unfaithful. Meanwhile, after decades of marriage, her mother acquires a bright orange suntan, moves out of the house, and takes up with a purse-carrying smoothie named Julio. And so on. Bridget navigates culinary disasters, mood swings, and scary publishing parties; she cares for her parents, talks endlessly with her cronies, and maybe, just maybe, hooks up with a nice boyfriend. Fielding’s diarist raises prickly insecurities to an art form, turns bad men into good anecdotes, and shows that it is possible to have both a keen eye for irony and a generous heart.
6) "The Rosie Project" by Graeme Simsion
Polished debut fiction, from Australian author Simsion, about a brilliant but emotionally challenged geneticist who develops a questionnaire to screen potential mates but finds love instead. The book won the 2012 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript.
“I became aware of applause. It seemed natural. I had been living in the world of romantic comedy and this was the final scene. But it was real.” So Don Tillman, our perfectly imperfect narrator and protagonist, tells us. While he makes this observation near the end of the book, it comes as no surprise—this story plays the rom-com card from the first sentence. Don is challenged, almost robotic. He cannot understand social cues, barely feels emotion and can’t stand to be touched. Don’s best friends are Gene and Claudia, psychologists. Gene brought Don as a postdoc to the prestigious university where he is now an associate professor. Gene is a cad, a philanderer who chooses women based on nationality—he aims to sleep with a woman from every country. Claudia is tolerant until she’s not. Gene sends Rosie, a graduate student in his department, to Don as a joke, a ringer for the Wife Project. Finding her woefully unsuitable, Don agrees to help the beautiful but fragile Rosie learn the identity of her biological father. Pursuing this Father Project, Rosie and Don collide like particles in an atom smasher: hilarity, dismay and carbonated hormones ensue. The story lurches from one set piece of deadpan nudge-nudge, wink-wink humor to another: We laugh at, and with, Don as he tries to navigate our hopelessly emotional, nonliteral world, learning as he goes. Simsion can plot a story, set a scene, write a sentence, finesse a detail. A pity more popular fiction isn’t this well-written. If you liked Australian author Toni Jordan's Addition (2009), with its math-obsessed, quirky heroine, this book is for you.
A sparkling, laugh-out-loud novel.
Book One of Two
7) "Bet Me" by Jennifer Crusie
A risk-averse actuary gets so lucky.
Minerva Dobbs has been warned: If she wants to snag a new guy to replace dreary David, who does something with software, it’s time to loosen up. Does Liza mean she should get rid of her favorite gray-checked suit? If plump, pretty Min dared to wear body-hugging purple get-ups like her tall, trim friend, she’d look like Barney the Dinosaur’s slut cousin. And, yes, her self-esteem needs a group hug right now from all her best buddies in the bar: Min just overheard David, a client of Cal Morrisey, a genial organizer of business seminars, bet ten bucks—or was it ten thousand?—that Cal can’t get into Min’s sensible white cotton panties. Cal, who’s so good-looking he should be on coins, takes the bet and unloads chatty Cynthie, his ex-girlfriend, a know-it-all TV shrink, on David. Then Cal takes Min out to dinner; eats dinner; then walks Min home. And that’s it: Have a nice life. But, hey, wait a minute—would Cal mind taking Min to her perfect sister’s splashy wedding? He and she would only have to pretend to like each other for a few months. No biggie. And, lo and behold, this mismatched pair slowly and surely discover that they really do like each other. Watch for the good parts: a sidesplitting riff on bridesmaids’ dresses; the nonsensical wishful thinking of a relationship psychologist; a maternal analysis of underwear as bait; and every bad line from every date from hell a big girl ever had. Crusie (Faking It, 2002, etc.) gives chick-lit clichés a triple shot of adrenaline, intelligence, and smart-mouth wit.
Bet you can’t stop reading it. Absolutely, irresistibly hilarious.
8) "I've Got Your Number" by Sophie Kinsella
Plucky bride-to-be makes an unexpected connection after she appropriates a stranger’s cellphone.
For Poppy Wyatt, losing her priceless antique engagement ring during a boozy pre-wedding brunch at a fancy hotel is bad enough without the added indignity of having her phone nicked by a drive-by bike mugger. All is not lost, though, as she discovers a perfectly good phone in the trash in the hotel lobby. Anxious to get the ring back without alarming her fiance Magnus, she gives out the new number to the concierge and her friends. But the phone, it turns out, belonged to the short-lived assistant to Sam Roxton, an acerbic (but handsome) young executive in a powerful consulting firm. Given to one-word correspondence, with little patience for small talk and social niceties, Sam understandably wants the company property back. But Poppy has other ideas and talks him into letting her keep it for a few more days, offering to forward him all pertinent messages. In spite of Sam’s reticence, the two strike up an oddly intimate text correspondence, with Poppy taking a way too personal interest in Sam’s life—including his odd relationship with his seemingly crazy girlfriend, Willow. Sam, for his part, confronts Poppy over her fears that she is not good enough for Magnus’ highly-educated family. Misunderstandings ensue, with Poppy’s well-intentioned meddling causing multiple headaches. But when Sam gets embroiled in a corporate scandal, Poppy jumps in to help him in the only way she can. Meanwhile, a scheming wedding planner, and Poppy’s conflicted feelings for Sam, threaten to derail the planned nuptials. Cheerfully contrived with a male love interest straight out of the Mr. Darcy playbook, Kinsella’s (Twenties Girl, 2009, etc.) latest should be exactly what her fans are hankering for. And physical therapist Poppy is easily as charming and daffy as shopaholic Rebecca Bloomwood—minus the retail obsession.
Screwball romance with a likable and vulnerable heroine.
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