|
Chick lit for summer's last days
REVIEWS BY IRIS BLASI While soaking up the final rays of summer sun, many readers want nothing more than to settle into a lounge chair with a cool drink and a chick-lit novel. Here are a few winners to accompany you as summer days fade to fall. War and Peace they're not, but if you're looking for a snappy beach read, then the following are prime picks. Running the numbers
In 20 Times a Lady, author Karyn Bosnak guides her readers on this tour of past loves with a heaping dose of humor and heart. Her first book, Save Karyn, was an autobiographical account of her successful appeal to strangers (via the Internet) to help her pay off her credit card debt, and Bosnak here proves her ability to create a fictional character every bit as endearing as she was able to make herself. Though the obvious ending can be seen from a mile away (could the love she had been looking for have been in front of her the whole time?), readers will still root for Delilah in her quest to beat the odds.
By Karyn Bosnak HarperPerennial, $13.95 352 pages ISBN 0060828358
Glamour girls
Young Emily becomes an engaging protagonist, as her intelligence and thoughtfulness make the supreme superficiality of the fashion world palatable. Hazelwood's sharp writing provides a glimpse into a glamorous world, but stays grounded by using college life as a foil to the fashionistas. Her real-life experience as model in the '80s and '90s—the era that brought us those larger-than-life supermodels Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell—gives her an insider edge that lends credibility to events that would be otherwise unbelievable.
By Robin Hazelwood Crown, $23.95 400 pages ISBN 0307337189
Lifestyles of the rich and famous
Real-life top doc Judy Goldstein and fiction writer Sebastian Stuart (The Mentor) make a fair pair. In this Nanny Diaries for the med set, they poke fun at the absurdity of modern hyper-parenting—from a mother who needs to be taught to use a vacuum after being told that it would soothe her colicky baby, to an ex-actress seeking a nose job for her infant. For readers looking for a laugh, this is just what the doctor ordered.
By Judy Goldstein and Sebastian Stuart St. Martin's, $22.95 304 pages ISBN 0312343272
Iris Blasi is a writer in New York City.
|
When 29-year-old Delilah Darling reads in The New York Post that the average person has 10.5 sexual partners in a lifetime, Delilah decides to do a little counting of her own. She's holding steady at 19—that is, until the day she gets fired from her production job on a Martha Stewart-esque television show and wakes up the next day hung over and in bed next to her smarmy ex-boss. Refusing to exceed the sexual status quo, Delilah takes her severance check and spends it on a cross-country drive down memory lane, visiting each of her previous partners in hopes she can make it work with one of them.
Support your 
Ex-model Robin Hazelwood conducts a guided tour down the runways of the late 1980s in her debut novel, Model Student. Before she knows it, Midwesterner Emily Woods finds herself at photo shoots with the same models whose images had previously been plastered on her bedroom walls. When the time comes to choose between college and catwalks, Emily decides she can do both, moving to New York City to attend Columbia University and pursue her dreams. It proves tougher to balance college life with the fashion world than Emily ever imagined. Doggedly pursuing her dual passions makes Emily start to spin out of control, until she finds herself flailing in both arenas and realizes that she may have to make a choice between brains and beauty.
As a newly minted med-school grad, Shelley Green finds herself installed at a pediatric practice on Manhattan's wealthy Upper East Side in the hilarious 24-Karat Kids. She quickly finds her lifelong desire to heal at odds with the lifestyles of the newly rich and not-necessarily famous as weekends in the Hamptons and invitations to cocktail parties make her fiancé (and her old life) pale in comparison. Seduced by her new lifestyle (complete with a plush apartment and a hot heir-to-a-fortune boyfriend) and physically transformed by the demands of her job from an overweight girl from Queens to a sleek, sophisticated and sought-after physician, Shelley initially revels in her quick jaunt up the social ladder, but comes to realize that things on Park Avenue are rarely as perfect as they seem.