Once we have enough members we can start an actual book club! In the meantime, here are some amazing books to try - reviews are courtesy of our friends at Chick Lit Central, Chick Lit Reviews and News, and Chick Lit Plus.
What books do you recommend? Leave a comment at the bottom for other members to enjoy.
The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me
Sally is an incredible singer but she sings only in her wardrobe where nobody can hear her. She'd rather join a nudist colony than sing in public.
That is until she ventures to New York where a wild and heady summer of love and loss changes her forever. No longer able to hide in the shadows, Sally must return home to London to fulfill a promise she cannot break - to share her voice.
But just as she's about to embark on her new life, a beautiful man turns up on Sally's doorstep bearing a sheepish smile and a mysterious hand-written message.
How did he find her? Why is he here? Does he hold the truth to what happened back in New York? And, with him back on the scene, will she still have the courage to step into the spotlight?
Read the full review on Chick Lit Club here
A Place to Call Home by Carole Matthews
In the dead of night, Ayesha takes her daughter, Sabina, and slips quietly from her home, leaving behind a life full of pain. Boarding a coach to London, all Ayesha wants is a fresh start.
Hayden, a former popstar, has kept himself hidden away for years. He's only opened up his home to two people - Crystal, a professional dancer with a heart of gold, and Joy, an ill-tempered retiree with a soft spot for waifs and strays.
When Crystal asks Hayden if Ayesha and Sabina can stay with them, he reluctantly agrees and, as different as they may be, they quickly form an unlikely bond. So when enemies threaten their peaceful home, they will do all they can to save it and each other.
Read Leah's full review on Chick Lit Reviews and News here
Keep Quiet by Lisa Scottoline
"What an incredibly difficult book to put down! Scottoline delivers another bookish gem with her latest offering. 5*" Samantha from Chick Lit Plus
One decision. One family's future in ruins.
When Jake Buckman decides to let Ryan, his sixteen-year-old son, practice driving home along a deserted street, he has no idea of the deadly consequences. But in the darkness of night, a runner comes from nowhere and the hit is fatal.
Now Jake and Ryan have two options: admit Ryan's responsibility ... or drive home as though nothing happened. What follows is not a clear-cut hit and run, but a split-second decision by a father who will do anything to protect his son.
But how much should a parent sacrifice for their child?
When Jake Buckman decides to let Ryan, his sixteen-year-old son, practice driving home along a deserted street, he has no idea of the deadly consequences. But in the darkness of night, a runner comes from nowhere and the hit is fatal.
Now Jake and Ryan have two options: admit Ryan's responsibility ... or drive home as though nothing happened. What follows is not a clear-cut hit and run, but a split-second decision by a father who will do anything to protect his son.
But how much should a parent sacrifice for their child?
Confessions of a Paris Party Girl by Vicki Lesage
Wine, romance, and French bureaucracy – the ups and downs of an American’s life in Paris. This laugh-out-loud memoir is almost too funny to be true!
Drinking too much bubbly. Meeting sappy Frenchmen who have girlfriends or are creeps or both. Encountering problème after problème with French bureaucracy. When newly-single party girl Vicki moved to Paris, she was hoping to taste wine, stuff her face with croissants, and maybe fall in love.
In her first book, this long-time blogger and semi-professional drinker recounts the ups and downs of her life in Paris. Full of sass, shamefully honest admissions, and situations that seem too absurd to be true, Vicki makes you feel as if you’re stumbling along the cobblestones with her.
Will she find love? Will she learn to consume reasonable amounts of alcohol? Will the French administration ever cut her a break?
Read Rhonda's full review on Chick Lit Plus here
Here's Looking at You by Mhairi McFarlane
"It's witty, romantic and heartbreaking. 5*" Holly from Chick Lit Reviews and NewsAnna Alessi – history expert, possessor of a lot of hair and an occasionally filthy mouth – seeks niceman for intelligent conversation and Mills & Boon moments.
Despite the oddballs that keep turning up on her dates, Anna couldn’t be happier. As a 30-something with a job she loves, life has turned out better than she dared dream. However, things weren’t always this way, and her years spent as the ‘Italian Galleon’ of an East London comprehensive are ones she’d rather forget.
So when James Fraser – the architect of Anna’s final humiliation at school – walks back into her life, her world is turned upside down. But James seems a changed man. Polite. Mature. Funny, even. People can change, right? So why does Anna feel like she’s a fool to trust him?
Read Holly's full review on Chick Lit Reviews and News here
Tempting Fate by Jane Green
"Get ready for an emotional read!" Samantha from Chick Lit PlusGabby and Elliott have been happily married for eighteen years. They have two teenaged daughters. They have built a life together. Forty-three year old Gabby is the last person to have an affair. She can’t relate to the way her friends desperately try to cling to the beauty and allure of their younger years…And yet, she too knows her youth is quickly slipping away. She could never imagine how good it would feel to have a handsome younger man show interest in her—until the night it happens. Matt makes Gabby feel sparkling, fascinating, alive—something she hasn’t felt in years. What begins as a long-distance friendship soon develops into an emotional affair as Gabby discovers her limits and boundaries are not where she expects them to be. Intoxicated, Gabby has no choice but to step ever deeper into the allure of attraction and attention, never foreseeing the life-changing consequences that lie ahead. If she makes one wrong move she could lose everything—and find out what really matters most.
Read Samantha's full review on Chick Lit Plus here
Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan
"I pretty much devoured it in just over 5 hours, because I was so enjoying being around everyone!" Leah from Chick Lit Reviews and NewsPolly Waterford is recovering from a toxic relationship. Unable to afford their flat, she has to move miles away from everyone, to a sleepy little seaside resort in Cornwall, where she lives alone above an abandoned shop.
And so Polly takes out her frustrations on her favourite hobby: making bread. But what was previously a weekend diversion suddenly becomes far more important as she pours her emotions into kneading and pounding the dough, and each loaf becomes better and better. With nuts and seeds, olives and chorizo, with local honey (courtesy of local bee keeper, Huckle), and with reserves of determination and creativity Polly never knew she had, she bakes and bakes and bakes . . . And people start to hear about it.
Sometimes, bread really is life . . . And Polly is about to reclaim hers.
Read Leah's full review on Chick Lit Reviews and News here
Never Google Heartbreak by Emma Garcia
Viv’s ex-fiancé, Rob, proposed to her three months after she slept with him - she thought it was one of those whirlwind romances you read about in magazines. Five years later, after Rob calling off the wedding for the third time, she has finally moved out.
As Viv passes through the three essential stages of grief (denial, vodka, disastrous haircut), she becomes determined that it's not too late to try and get Rob back. One drunken declaration of love at an extremely inappropriate moment later, and Viv's scruffy, tequila-swilling best friend Max is there to pick up the pieces.
Just when Viv’s starting to realise that maybe the real thing has been under her nose all along, she makes what might just be the biggest mistake of her life…
Can love sneak up on us unexpected? What’s the answer to heartbreak? And what’s a girl to do when even the Internet doesn’t have the answer?
Read Samantha's full review on Chick Lit Plus here
The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell
Meet the Bird Family
All four children have an idyllic childhood: a picture-book cottage in a country village, a warm, cosy kitchen filled with love and laughter, sun-drenched afternoons in a rambling garden.
But one Easter weekend a tragedy strikes the Bird family that is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear them apart.
The years pass and the children become adults and begin to develop their own quite separate lives. Soon it's almost as though they've never been a family at all.
Almost. But not quite.
Because something has happened that will call them home, back to the house they grew up in - and to what really happened that Easter weekend all those years ago.
The Rosie Project by Graeme
Rosie Jarman is all these things. She also is strangely beguiling, fiery, and intelligent. And while Don quickly disqualifies her as a candidate for the Wife Project, as a DNA expert Don is particularly suited to help Rosie on her own quest: identifying her biological father. When an unlikely relationship develops as they collaborate on the Father Project, Don is forced to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love, it finds you.
Stella by Helen Eve
17-year-old Stella Hamilton is the star blazing at the heart of Temperley High. Leader of the maliciously exclusive elite, she is surrounded by adulation; envied and lusted after in equal measure. And she is in the final stage of a five-year campaign to achieve her destiny: love with her equally popular male equivalent, and triumph as Head Girl on election night.
By contrast, new girl Caitlin Clarke has until now lived a quietly conformist life in New York. With the collapse of her parents’ marriage she has been sent across the Atlantic for an English boarding school education, only to discover that at Temperley, the only important rules are the unwritten ones.
It's a world of the beautiful and the dangerous, and acceptance means staying on the right side of Stella Hamilton, the most beautiful and dangerous of them all.
Not everyone is happy to be under the Hamilton rule. But fighting the system means treading the same dark path as Stella - and if Caitlin puts a foot wrong, it's a long way down . . .
Yours Truly by Kirsty Greenwood
"Yours Truly is a one of those rare books with a plot you haven’t seen before." Leah from Chick Lit Reviews and News'Your bum does not look big in that dress.'
'Mmmm, this meal is delicious!'
'Of course you're better looking than Jon Hamm.'
Newly engaged Natalie Butterworth is an easy-going girl. She'll do anything for a quiet life and if telling a few teensy white lies keeps her friends and family happy, then so what? It's not like they'll ever discover what she's really thinking ...
Until one night, thanks to a pub hypnotist, Natalie's most private thoughts begin to bubble up and pop out of her mouth. Things get very messy indeed, especially when some sticky home truths offend her fiancé.
Natalie must track down the hypnotist before her wedding is officially cancelled. So along with bad influence bestie Meg, Natalie finds herself in the Yorkshire Parish of Little Trooley – a small village bursting with big secrets, nosy old folk and intriguing Wellington-wearing men.
When the girls get stuck in the village with no means of escape and no way to break the hypnotist's spell, Natalie is forced to face the truths she has been avoiding her whole life ...
Read Leah's full review on Chick Lit Reviews and News here
The Memory Book by Rowan Coleman
"I genuinely think this book will sit within my favourite books of all time." Becky Gulc, Chick Lit Central The name of your first-born. The face of your lover. Your age. Your address...
What would happen if your memory of these began to fade?
Is it possible to rebuild your life? Raise a family? Fall in love again?
When Claire starts to write her Memory Book, she already knows that this scrapbook of mementoes will soon be all her daughters and husband have of her. But how can she hold on to the past when her future is slipping through her fingers...?
Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella
"Wedding Night was a delightful and hilarious story with many unexpected twists." Melissa Amster, Chick Lit Central It's all gone wrong with the man Lottie thought was Mr Right. Then out of the blue she gets a call from her first love. She decides it muct be Fate, and rushes off to marry him and rekindle their sizzling Greek island romance.
Lottie's older sister can't believe she's doing something so crazy. No more Ms Nice Sister, she's stopping this marriage. Right away! And she'll go to any lengths to do so...
Read Melissa's full review on Chick Lit Central here
Me Before You by JoJo Moyes
"Moyes is an amazing storyteller, capturing me right at the first chapter." Allie Smith, Chick Lit Central
Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.
What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.
Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.
What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.
Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.
What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.
Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.
What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.
Read Allie's full review on Chick Lit Central here
Thanks for the shout-outs to our reviewers!
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