Chrissy L

• Rated 4 stars

“How easy it would have been for Anna Maxted to have created two sisters that were stereotypical opposites. While one sister in this novel is a high-achieving career girl and the other is a more free-spirited journalist, I found the characters to be nicely three-dimensional, even the men (who are normally pretty flat in chick lit). The relationship between the sisters is complicated and becomes increasingly so during the progression of the novel, but is very believable. Anna Maxted tends to deal with heavier subjet matter than most chick lit authors, incorporating themes like death of a parent or date rape. This novel deals with miscarriage and unexpected pregnancy, and handles it in a very delicate way. Unlike most books about sisters, there is no "good sister" or "bad sister" here, which is the way it normally happens in real life.”

Chrissy L wrote this review Friday, April 15, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“Have you ever opened a box of two dozen Godiva truffles and at once hoped it would last indefinitely while wanting to greedily devour them by the fistful until you were sated into a chocolate-and-sugar coma? That, to me, is what it is like to find a book as delicious as Allison Pearson's I Think I Love You. What on the surface appears to be a 300-page love letter to David Cassidy is, in fact, a Valentine to all girls everywhere who have ever loved a pop star. Pearson writes so fondly of David through the eyes of Petra, a 13-year-old devotee from Wales. You don't have to own a copy of The Partridge Family's Greatest Hits or have read Cassidy's memoir C'mon, Get Happy: Fear and Loathing on the Partridge Family Bus in order to appreciate the details in the book, but it does enhance the fun of listening in on Petra's lunch conversation with her friends as they analyze the nuances of the pause before the "...but" in "Could it be Forever?" The song lyrics and other details that resonate with the Cassidy fans reading the novel are like little gems buried by the author to make us smile along the way.
Pearson demonstrates brilliantly with this book that a novel does not need to be tragic, provocative or riddled with dramatic plot twists in order to engage an audience. Other writers, take note! All we really need is a character or two with whom we can connect, and will will be in for the long haul. ”

Chrissy L wrote this review Saturday, April 16, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 4 stars

“Sara Gruen does get points for an original story. While it was not nearly as captivating as Water For Elephants, it was an interesting change to read a book in which the most important characters were a group of bonobos. Well-researched and carried out, this book poses questions to us all about how we treat animals, especially those who are so close to being human. Do they deserve respect and dignity simply because they are alive, or do they exist solely for our own enjoyment and entertainment? How much is too much? There are human characters as well, including one of the researchers who works with them to teach them sign language as well as (receptive) English, and a reporter covering the story of the great apes from their time in the language lab to their reality show. I did find the human story lines to be a bit tangential; more than once I was begging the author to get back to the apes! I do look forward to Gruen's next novel, and I hope it will also center around animals, as she clearly has a passion for them.”

Chrissy L wrote this review Tuesday, April 5, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“I would say that this book is par for the course for Kinsella. By that, I mean that she usually starts out with a heroine who finds herself in hot water within the first chapter or two, and by the end has solved all of her problems after a brush with a crisis. Having said that, Lexi Smart is a stronger woman, emotionally, than Becky (Bloomwood) Brandon of the Shopaholic series. This is a cute novel about amnesia, with many of the sitcom amnesia gags, minus her getting hit on the head again to regain her memory. Lexi wakes up in a hospital room and soon realizes that she's forgotten everything that's happened to her in the past three years, and it just so happens that those three years were full of change in her, from her appearance to her marital status, living situation and financial and career outlooks. Her new life is like a fairy tale in many ways when compared with her old life, and so even though she can't remember how she got there, she does her best to become acclimated so that she can continue to live the fantastic way she must have been for the past three years. Of course, if that was it, there wouldn't be a plot, and she quickly realizes that there are things she misses about her old life, which to her seems like yesterday. The women she remembers as being her best friends won't speak to her anymore, her mother's house is overrun with the stink of the dog's she's been compulsively adopting, and there is a mysterious stranger who insists that she was really in love with him, not her gorgeous new husband. Who can she trust? I'm sure you can figure out how it all ends, but it's an amusing ride from Point A to Point B.”

Chrissy L wrote this review Saturday, April 16, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“It was good to see Ridley Jones again. I enjoyed her in the first book, Beautiful Lies, even though I found it rather predictable, as a thriller. This book was more intense, with the stakes being higher, as it seemed that even more people were trying to kill her now, simply because she knew too much. I have to say that this one had more intrigue in it for me than the last one, and there were many more surprises. I hope Lisa Unger revisits Ridley Jones again soon.”

Chrissy L wrote this review Monday, November 14, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 1 stars

“I love a good chick lit. This was not a good chick lit. I will try this author again; I've liked other books by her in the past, but this one fell very flat.”

Chrissy L wrote this review Thursday, March 31, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“This is the follow-up to Giffin's Something Borrowed, told from Darcy's point of view. In the previous book, the reader got to know Rachel White, the nice, smart, hard-working honest girl who was a lifelong friend of Darcy Rhone, the beautiful, superficial spendthrift who got by on her looks. Rachel is set to be the maid-of-honor in Darcy's wedding, which is called off when Darcy realizes that Rachel is having an affair with Darcy's fiancee. This novel picks up where that one leaves off, with Darcy realizing that she is pregnant by the best man of the would-be wedding, the result of some pre-marriage trysts of her own. Darcy narrates this story, in which she decides she needs to leave New York and has an epiphany that she wants to be A Better Person. It happens pretty neatly, actually. She makes a list of qualities that "the new Darcy" should cultivate, and almost overnight she is a new version of herself. Of course it's chick lit, and it's fun and light, so that can be forgiven, but the ending was also clear from the first twenty pages of the novel. I did enjoy reading about the situation through Darcy's eyes, but was sad that even through Darcy's point of view, she didn't have many redeeming qualities to speak of.”

Chrissy L wrote this review Wednesday, April 6, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“I've read a lot of chick lit by now. It's a guilty pleasure, a blanket to wrap around yourself at the end of a long day when you just want to unwind and let a story wash over you before you go to bed. For chick lit, I'd rank this one pretty high. Emily Giffin actually put effort into fleshing out her characters instead of peppering her book with the stock ones we find everywhere. Thus, the female protagonist didn't have a gay male best friend just for the sake of having one, she wasn't always trying to lose just six more pounds in order for her life to be perfect and whole, she wasn't always fretting about having enough money to buy something fabulous. So while this is your basic love-triangle story, it's well-written and everyone involved is three-dimensional enough that you do end up invested in the story. Rachel is having an affair with her best friend's fiance, in a nutshell. She's unapologetic enough about it that you don't have to slog through pages of her apologizing to the reader, but she does have a sense that she's betraying a life-long friend. You get to read the complicated relationship the two women have had since elementary school and the outside perspective of some of their other friends. The guy involved is, eh, probably the least interesting part of the story.”

Chrissy L wrote this review Wednesday, April 6, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Helen Fielding was one of the original chick lit authors when the genre first started in the 1990s. I have to give her points for originality. This book is funny, Bridget is just as bumbling and unsure of herself but optimistically charming as she was in the first. ”

Chrissy L wrote this review Wednesday, March 23, 2011. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“
This book was a real treat to read. :) Sarah Knight was a woman who lived in Boston and traveled mostly by herself on horseback from Boston to New York City and back. Luckily for us, she kept a journal. She wrote candidly and with a sense of humor about the trials she faced on the journey as well as the people she encountered. Historical fiction is wonderful but a genuine diary is even more revealing. I'd recommend this little book to anyone interested in our colonial history.”

Chrissy L wrote this review Monday, November 14, 2011. ( reply | permalink )