Book Review: Certain Girls

First up in my book review week is a light beach read.

Book Review for: Certain Girls
By: Jennifer Weiner

Certain Girls is a sequel to Good In Bed, but can be read as a stand alone novel. Cannie is a novelist who pretends she is nothing more than a stay-at-home mom and a perfect housewife. In reality, she is the best-selling author of a tell-all memoir (okay, fictional memoir based on her evil ex who got her pregnant and left) that shook up the world years ago. Now she hides behind a pen name writing for a science fiction series and pretends her best-selling book never happened. Except her just-hit-puberty daughter–which she has devotedly and painstakingly sheltered all her life–has just found the book… and read it. And she’s got questions. Lots of questions. About her conception. About her father. About her mother’s past. And most of all–was she even wanted?

In the meantime, Cannie’s husband is urging her to consider expanding their family through the use of a surrogate and her editor is pushing her to peek out from behind the shelter of the pen name and be ‘Cannie, best-selling author of the fictional expose’ once again.

What’s a gal to do?

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Book Review: Spin

Book Review: Spin
By Catherine McKenzie

I’ve read the big names in chick lit (like Meg Cabot, Sophie Kinsella, Helen Fielding, etc) and enjoyed them. But none of them were Canadian and none of them had that special quirkiness that spoke directly to me. I was impressed by this debut novel, Spin, by Catherine McKenzie. Chick lit is not an easy genre to break into and it is near impossible to keep it fresh and not make it trivial. But McKenzie kept it fresh and original while delivering the true chick lit form.

Here’s the story: A once-from-the-country gal is trying to break into the world of music writing in the big city. She’s turning 30 and she still hasn’t made that dream come true. Then she gets the call–an interview with a big name music magazine. Unfortunately, she kind of accidentally overdoes her pre-birthday celebration the night before and arrives at the dream interview drunk. Oops. However, she is granted a chance to redeem herself. All she has to do is go to rehab and sneak out tidbit gossip on the celebrity who is already there. No problem, right? Right? Hmmm… except she just passed the ‘I’m an alcoholic’ admission test with flying colours–and not in a good way. So, did she put a ‘good’ spin on her drinking in order to fit into rehab, or does she have a genuine problem?

Of course, in true chick lit form, things get right bungled up the further we go into the story. However, this is where the novel truly shines fresh. You think it’s all going to be solved and tied up with a nice bow in one way… and it does… but totally in a different (and even better) way than expected.

I’m looking forward to reading more by this author. If you like chick lit, pick it up at your local bookstore–if you are Canadian. This book isn’t available in US bookstores yet–but you can order a copy from my favourite little Canadian mega bookstore: Chapters!

Oh, and guess what? You can get it through Amazon too:

Book Review: Girls of Riyadh

Book Review: Girls of Riyadh
By Rajaa Alsanea

The Girls of Riyadh caused waves in the Middle East when Alsanea released this revealing look into four young women and their quest for love and marriage. The book tells the stories of four girls through a series of emails. From the outgoing to the passive, these four girls band together to try and find love, play by the rules and laws of their society while figuring out men, love and most importantly, what they will settle for and what they won’t.

Basically, the book is chick lit set in the Muslim/Islam world, so if you like chick lit as well as learning about women in other parts of the world, you’ll enjoy this book.

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Book Review: Anybody Out There?

Book Review: Anybody Out There?
By Marian Keyes

This story starts with Anna staying at her parents house in Ireland, healing from some major injuries and wishing she could go back home to New York (which she eventually does for ‘closure’). There is also this mysterious Aidan guy that she apparently still loves. But what the heck is going on?

This book has the mother of all story hooks. Seriously. You don’t know if Aidan is good, bad, dead or alive. You flip flop between he’s bad–he did this to her and he’s a good guy–he’s got to get back in touch with her. It isn’t until page 150 or so that you figure out what is going on. (Tell me! Don’t tell me! Oh dang, you actually told me!) By then, you are involved with the nutters who are Anna’s family as well as Anna’s coping strategies. You can’t put the story down. You have to find out how it all turns out. Does she speak to him (dead or alive)? Does she get better and carry on with her life? At the last minute, does she pull the work project out of a hat? Oh, so many things that make it worth stay tuned!

It’s hard to talk about this book without giving it away…so that’s all I’m going to say about it. And yes, I will be reading more of Marian Keyes. (Thanks to my cousin for introducing me to Keyes, and thanks to my mom for buying me the book. I have a new favourite author to add to my list.)

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Book Review: And God Created the Au Pair

Book review: And God Created the Au Pair
By Benedicte Newland and Pascale Smets

This book is done entirely in emails. (Like Meg Cabot’s Boy Meets Girl and Every Boy’s Got One.) Two sisters, separated by the Atlantic Ocean communicate their adventures in parenting via email.

Charlotte is in England with three children and a house that is being renovated. Her main goal is to get through another day of keeping her youngest and most troublesome child, Hugh, through the day alive. Which can be a tricky feat when your brother-in-law has turned the guest bedroom into a photo lab and you have to use a crane to get your husband’s Christmas present (a rather weighty and large bathtub) into the house.

Her sister, Nell, is in Canada coping with a rather strange son who has enough minor medical problems to keep her on her toes. She does, however, have a lovely ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ neighbour who keeps her preoccupied and humoured.

The scary thing is that despite barely keeping their home-fronts from become a war-front, they want more babies. Thank goodness for the Au Pair.

Currently available new at: Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble

Flaming Fingers

My fingers are burning up my keyboard so amazingly fast that there are flames shooting out all over the place.

Okay, maybe not. But I did write 4,228 words in about 3 hours this afternoon. That’s pretty fast. My word count for NaNoWriMo is now 13,052. Wahoo! And the story is officially over the starting hump and all the fun action gets to happen now. Either the story is going to roll out before me like some grand red carpet, or the earth in front of me is going to crumble and fall away like some video game. One or the other. I’m kind of hoping for the red carpet, but seeing as I don’t know what the next big key in the story is going to be–you know, the one the story sits on–it really could go either way.

Oh, and it seems to be taking more of an urban fantasy feel than a chick lit feel. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not seeing as urban fantasy is pretty much the next genre bubble that is about to pop. If it hasn’t already. At least there are no vampires. (Nothing against the undead or those who write about them.)

So there you have it, a NaNoWriMo update.

NaNo-Uh oh?

I’ve promised myself to write a new story for NaNoWriMo this month. I even have a story idea that has been flouncing around in the back of my head for at least 6-8 months. No worries, right?

Well maybe if the genre I write in wasn’t dead. Seriously. I had a published author tell me the story of how her chick lit novel didn’t sell, despite editor interest, last year. I’ve heard agents proclaim that the genre is dead. Can’t sell a thing. Not so good for the unpublished writer of chick lit, is it?

But I have faith. I really enjoy writing chick lit and it is the genre for which I get the majority of my ideas. There has got to be a way. In the meantime, what is a gal to do when she’s promised herself to write a NaNoWriMo story but the story idea is <eeek> chick lit.

I suppose it means suck it up and write it! Write what you love–that’s always the advice they give out, isn’t it?

Point of View: An Oh, Sh*t Moment

I have a confession to make: I like to write in the first person point of view.

So, now that I have been stoned to death…

All I have read lately in that it is WRONG, Wrong, WRONG to write in this POV.

Crap. Maybe it is all the years of journal writing (as in diaries) that makes this form feel the most comfortable and natural to me.

So what is a chick lit writing girl to do? Do I cave? Is it really that bad? Am I really screwing up? Is it okay? What do I do?

Do I REALLY have to go through FOUR frickin’ manuscripts and change the point of view? I don’t even know how to do that. I looked through some of my most loved books–the ones where I really got into the heroine and *gasp* they are NOT in the first person POV. How the heck did they do that? It felt like I was in their head!

But if it means sitting on this getting-to-be-threadbare couch day in and day out and in the end selling a manuscript, I am in. I’ll do it. I’ll lick the broken glass.

But this is really going to hurt, isn’t it?