Opposite of Love by Julie Buxbaum

I really enjoyed this book. It was a little bit deeper than light chick lit books, but not so deep that you found it hard to get through.

Emily the main character is a successful Manhattan lawyer. Just as she feels her long-time boyfriend is about to propose, she goes and breaks up with him. She can't really exlpain why, but feels like it was the best decision.

Her life post break-up starts to unravel- Her Grandpa Jack is starting to loose it and her emotionally distant father isn't helping the situation. Her boss is an ever-demanding womanizer and Emily has stepped right in to being his target. She finds herself at many crossroads throughout the story and misses having her best friend and the one who knows her better than anyone- her Ex Andrew- to go through it with. But he wants her to just leave him alone.

It was a great, plausible story and I am looking forward to reading Julie's next novel "After You".

I give this one 4 out of 5 stars.

The Sleeping Beauty Proposal by Sarah Strohmeyer

I loved this book. It is totally unrealistic and if it happened in the real world I am sure things would go very differently, but it was a great story. Genie, the main character, has been dating her boyfriend Hugh for over 4 years. Being in her mid-thirties she has been waiting for him to pop the question for a while. Hugh has just wrote a NY Times bestseller with a very romantic plot line. While on his book tour he does a TV interview. As Genie is watching the interview, the interviewer asks Hugh about his own love life and this prompts him to give the most romantic on-air proposal ever. When Genie finally gets a hold of Hugh on the phone he explains that the proposal was not meant for her!

Genie is flabbergasted and everyone they know thinks the proposal was meant for her. So following the advice of her best friend, Genie goes along with it.

"You remind me of that idiot Sleeping Beauty, lying around like a zombie waiting for your prince. Well, guess what, he rode right past your castle and now you have a choice — you can either go back to bed or you can wake up!"

(I don’t really get how faking her engagement is “waking up” but whatever)

Hugh is over in England continuing his book tour, so he is not there to dispute it.

Genie plays the role of bride-to-be with her family, friend, and co-workers. She lets them start planning showers and the actual wedding. She even goes as far as buying a fake engagement ring. She feels like this is all Hugh’s fault anyway, so let him explain the mistake to everyone. It all makes for an entertaining story.

From the author’s website:
“Genie realizes that she never needed a man to start her life — to buy a home, to get a better job, or even to wear a diamond ring. And if Prince Charming wants to show up while she's at it, she just might teach him a thing or two.”

I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars!

Check out the author's website here.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

I didn’t know what to expect with this book. I knew that it had won some awards and I had heard good things about it, but I didn’t really know what it was about or why it was so great.

It is basically the story of a young guy named “Pi”. His father is a zookeeper in India and eventually they sell the zoo and a lot of the animals. They take a large ship transporting some of the animals when the ship sinks and Pi finds himself as the only human survivor in a life boat with a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and a 450 lb. tiger. Sounds unbelievable right? Well, that is kind of the point. I think the whole point of the book is faith. I mean when someone tells you a story you have to have faith that it is true because if they were the only ones there to experience it, you will never know for sure.

Really the way he writes the story does not make it seem unbeileable at all. He tells it in such a matter of fact way. It is just like someone recounting exactly what they experienced without embellishing it to make it sound better or worse than it was. Just like “here is what happened, and then this happened…etc.” But with enough detail to make it believable and interesting.

The first part of the book was kind of slow for me. But as soon as he found himself ship wrecked, things picked up. The majority of the book chronicles his 227 days trying to survive at sea with a tiger in his boat. It is a great adventure story and the lengths at which he went to survive and the surprising coincidences that saved his life multiple times are astonishing. He has to tame the tiger in order to survive and provide him with fresh water in food the whole time so the tiger won’t kill him. All this while trying to keep himself well-fed and hydrated. Some of the highlights are an epic battle between a tiger and a shark, finding a meerkat infested floating algae island, a brief period of blindness where they randomly run in to another blind castaway, and the many fishing adventures.

Once I go into it I couldn’t put it down.

The only parts that were hard for me to read were the gruesome detail about the hyena slowing killing the zebra and the parts in the beginning where he becomes a faithful Hindu, Christian, and Muslim all at the same time. That is impossible. You might could get away with following the religious traditions of each faithfully at the same time, but there is no way all 3 can coexist if you accept and really believe the teachings of each.

But it is unlike anything I have ever read and was very entertaining.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Through Thick and Thin by Alison Pace

This book has been on my bookshelf for a while. I had nnever read anything by this author, but it sounded like the perfect chick lit book. Struggles of losing weight and getting a dog...sounded like a great read to me.

The story is about Meredith, who is a young, single girl living in NYC. She is the critic for The NY magazine and gets to take friends along to try out all of New York's hip, cool new resturants. Meredith's sister Stephanie seems to have the prefect suburban life. She's got a husband cut straigh out of a J Crew catalog, a new baby girl, and lots of new mommy friends and activities.

As a way to stay connected, the sisters decide to go on a diet together. They try everything from The Zone to Atkins to Weight Watchers. Each has their own successes and struggles with each diet.

Meredith seems to have a much harder time sticking to it seeing how she gets paid to review great food. And Stephanie discovers a damaging secret about her seemingly perfect husband that causes her to loose focus for a while too.

Meredith gets a new dog and falls in love with him and discovers Doga- which is doggie and people yoga.

It was filled with lots of little interesting plot lines, but nothing deep at all. I like reading mindless chick lit sometimes, but at the end of this book I kind of felt like I had just wasted my time. I really didn't take anything away from it. I didn't care too much to know what happened to the characters after it ended. And everything in the book just really felt...well...forgettable.

The book isn't bad, and really I am just one opinion, but I would say don't waste your time with this one.

I give it 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

I related a lot to Girls in Trucks. Even though I am not a debutante, even though I have never nor will ever live in New York City, even though I don’t have any Camellias that I will be tied to for life, I could just relate to the main character Sarah Walters and her trials and tribulations in this coming of age story.

Sarah grows up in South Carolina and is born into an exclusive old debutante society- The Charleston Camellia Society. She goes through cotillion training and throughout her life the Camellias are an influence. She’s kind of a rebel though doing a lot of things that aren’t too Caellia likeThere are a few stories that take place in SC as she is growing up, but then she move to NYC after college. It follows her along many of life’s adventures dealing with family, friends, and dating.

There was a quote towards the end of the book where Sarah is at a party back in SC talking to one of her ex-boyfriends and reminiscing on how much things have changed. But she says something like “as we looked around we were comforted by the fact that everyone ended up just where they were meant to be.” I loved that.

It is a great story and not too long, so it was a quick read. (I finished it over a week ago but have just been too lazy to write a review.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Wolves in Chic Clothing

Wolves in Chic Clothing is one of those books that is like a guilty pleasure- like tabloid magazines or watching The Bachelor. It is full of drama, catty girls, gossip, and the glitzy uppity life of New York's finest.

The story is mainly about Julia who works as a sales girl at Pelham's jewelers. She is asked to deliver a very important package to Lell Pelham on her wedding day and from there things start to change dramatically for Julia. She is offered a position as Lell's new assistant/best friend. She gets to give input on Pelham's jewelry and must be the new face of Pelham. Now she gets to borrow designer clothes and go to extravagant fundraising events and becomes New York society's new "it girl".

However, she is more like a pawn in a game played by Lell and her best friend Polly. They get Julia in to this circle and tell her how to dress and act. It is like a sport for them. Lell and Polly and their little circle is full of gossip and fakeness.

This book kind of made me realize just how damaging gossip can be and how silly girls sound when they are talking about each other behind their backs.

It's a cute, fun read. My favorite character was actually Hope, one of Lell and Polly's friends. She just seemed like she had a good heart and I was rooting for a happy ending for her character.

One thing that annoyed me in the book was how the author's tried to use cool "lingo" or shorten words to make them sound cool. It was so annoying. Do people really talk like that?

Overall I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars. Something good to read on the beach if you don't want to think too much!

The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve

My old boss gave me this book to read about three years ago, but I just never got around to it. But then a few weeks ago I saw they were going to play the movie based on this book on Lifetime. I decided to tape it and had a mental note to start this book ASAP. I kind of knew what the big plot line was already, so I don’t know if this biased my view on the book overall.

The story is about Katherine who is married to Jack, a pilot. Jack’s plane explodes over the coast of Ireland killing him and 104 passengers. It is a huge news story and people from the airline, the union, the FBI, and the media swarm Katherine’s house to try to figure out what happened. Robert is the first to arrive and he is from the union. He is by Katherine’s side though almost everything and is a great support for her. At one point I thought they were going to end up romantically involved. Jack and Katherine have a daughter, Mattie, and her father’s death hits her really hard. Luckily Katherine’s grandmother Julia is there to help out.

As more pieces of the puzzle of what happened to Jack’s plane start to come together, Katherine starts to discover secrets she never knew about Jack. They were married for I think 16 years and he kept some really big secrets from her.

The story makes you think about how well you can really know a person. But I was let down at Katherine’s reaction to finding out some of these secrets. I would have been enraged and crushed to find out some of the things she did. But I just didn’t feel that from her.

I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Oh and the Lifetime movie, not that good either.