2020 Summer Reading Guide: Chick Lit
Every year, the Chick Lit category is the most popular one on the whole Summer Reading Guide. And I’m right there with you – what could be more fun for a sunny summer day?
The Accidental Beauty Queen by Teri Wilson
Charlotte is a school librarian and happy to spend her life buried in a book. Her twin sister, though, has spent her life chasing beauty pageant crowns and now is competing for Miss American Treasure. Except, the night before the pageant begins, Ginny has a horrible allergic reaction and begs Charlotte to take her place until Ginny is well enough to step back in. But even though they look alike, Charlotte and Ginny are wildly different – is there any way they can pull off a con at this level? I read this last summer and blew through it in a day – it was just so so delightful. It’s also squeaky clean!
Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center
I read her book How to Walk Away a few years ago and liked it, but didn’t love it. But this one? I LOVED. I was completely absorbed by this story about Cassie, a female firefighter, who leaves her comfortable Texas firehouse for Boston so she can help her aging mother. The Boston firehouse is old-school in the extreme and their excitement about having a female firefighter? Zero percent. And they don’t hide it at all. The only person at the firehouse who doesn’t seem to hate her is the one person lower on the totem pole than she is: the rookie.
THE FLATSHARE by Beth O’Leary
I was drawn in by the premise of this book – two people who live in the same apartment, but have never met – but then I was drawn in by the characters, the story and the unexpected humor. Tiffy is coming off a bad breakup and needs a new place in a hurry and Leon only uses his apartment for sleeping during the day since he works a graveyard shift. As the two start leaving notes for each other (at first slightly snippy), they slowly come to like each other but. . . they’ve still never met. I’m looking forward to her second book, The Switch, coming out in August!
The Royal We by HEather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
This book is just a total delight, based very loosely on the courtship of Kate Middleton and Prince William. In this version, Bex is an American who meets Prince Nick when she goes to Oxford. The book begins on the night before their royal wedding (the event of the century, as you can imagine) but it’s a big question of whether the wedding will actually go forward or not and the book jumps back to their meeting eight years early and takes you through their up-and-down relationship to give you a peek at why the wedding might not go through after all. The Royal We came out five years and ago and I cannot WAIT for the sequel, The Heir Affair, coming out in July.