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Book suggestions for a friend?


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Hey everyone!

 

I was chatting to a very good friend of mine about what she was reading (funny how that always comes up in any of my conversations :P ) and she was asking me for some good book suggestions. Unfortunately she doesn't really like my type of thing so I wasn't able to help :lol:, so here I am asking you lovely people :motz:

 

Can you give me any suggestions for some great reads? She's recently read the following and thought they were brill :D

 

Ten Things I Want My Daughter To Know

P.S I Love You

The Chocolate Lovers Club

The Chocolate Lovers Diet

Confessions of a Shopaholic

 

Sorry I can't remember all the authors :blush: She doesn't read an awful lot, probably about 5 or 6 books a year so it would need to be something that isn't too heavy or long winded.

 

I know you lot have all got great taste and I will have no hesitation passing on your recommendations! :motz:

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Karma by Holly A Harvey is excellent. I gave it a solid 8/10! :blush:

 

Synopsis:

Karma is a light-hearted, comical story about Paige, a 28 year-old northern woman whose life revolves around sleep, caffeine and VH-1 rather than sex, drugs and rock n roll. She has money problems to rival the national debt, more people walking over her than a 'Welcome' mat and the requisite ex-boyfriend from hell. Paige has always lived by the belief that "what goes around comes around," but after a betrayal by a friend at work and unhappy memories aroused by an invitation to a school reunion, she decides to give fate a helping hand.

 

Review:

I started reading this in my coffee break and almost snorted coffee out of my nose within the first couple of pages - this could have been written about me! All the mention of singing along to Adam and the Ants and seeing Biker Mice from Mars on the telly (it was a terrible cartoon!) could have been lifted straight out of my life. This is very funny stuff - light-hearted, but written with great warmth.

 

I

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I'd definitely recommend Annie Sanders books, particularly Busy Woman Seeks Wife:

 

Alex may be an excellent marketing executive, organized, efficient and dedicated, but when it comes to her domestic life, she’s seriously lacking. Her washing machine is broken, the leaking shower is causing complaints from the neighbour in the flat below, and when she arrives home from her latest overseas business meeting, her cleaner is otherwise engaged in Alex’s bed! Telling Saffron, her best friend who is a full time wife and mother, Alex receives a telephone call informing her that her mother has fallen off a stepladder and broken her arm, and is going to need supervision in her convalescence. With another business trip on the cards, Saff comes up with a brilliant idea to get someone to help Alex with all areas of her home life, and writes the advert to be placed in the local paper – Busy Woman Seeks Wife …

 

This is the third Annie Sanders book I’ve read, and it is probably my favourite one so far. Annie Sanders is actually two writers, Annie Ashworth and Meg Sanders, who write both non-fiction and fiction books together. Their novels definitely need to be placed in the “Entertainment” category of my reading, as they are pure escapism. Characters are always real people with real lives, who have flaws and problems but who you grow to know and love through the course of the book. This one is no exception, with five main characters to get to know, each of them is important to the plot as well as having their own story to develop.

 

Annie Sanders books will be placed squarely in the chick-lit genre, and while there is nothing wrong with that, I feel their books are much more about the observation of the lives of their characters social situations, than about the standard romance-led chick-lit novels, dealing with issues of motherhood and careers in the 21st century. They are warm and funny, full of charming people who are recognizable as people we all know.

 

Annie Sanders are quickly becoming some of my favourite chick-lit books to read, and “Busy Woman Seeks Wife” is no exception. If you like authors like Jane Green and Sophie Kinsella, and are, like me, getting a bit too old for mainstay of chick-lit, the twenty-somethings searching for true love, then I would definitely recommend this book for you.

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Erm...this really isn't my field, then...:lol:

 

It's not Mac? There was something that thought that maybe you had a well read copy of Bridget Jones in your 'Man bag'. :lol:

 

:lol:

 

As for me. No not really my sort of thing, but there does sound like there are many suggestions for your friend I hope she finds something soon.

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These are quite old now and of limited availability at waterstones.com but:

 

My Life on a Plate/ Don't You Want Me? both by India Knight

 

Don't You Want Me? is the funniest of the two, exploring the relationships of a late thirties single mum with her ex-husbands and boyfriends, her latest love interests (including a man over twice her age, who is mostly made of plastic and is the colour orange) and her extremely sexy flatmate. I cried, laughed, and cried with laughter.

 

And now I've written that I think it's going back on my TBR pile as a reread :lol:

 

It's only a couple of hundred pages, and each chapter feels like a story on its own, so she could pick it up and put it down as necessary, it's also a nice light read. The stuff chick-lit is made of (and although I don't read chick-lit more than say one every few years, mainly because I'm not a fan of the genre, it remains one of my favourite books to date).

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I thought Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding was very good.

 

It's a lighthearted girlie adventure story with lots of Helen Fielding style silly humour thrown in, about a style journalist with aspirations into serious news reporting. She gets caught up in a james bond style adventure while on assignment - or is it all just in her overactive imagination?

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Charm, would your friend be interested in any of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood books by Rebecca Wells? They have serious subject matter, but funny women with very endearing relationships.

 

I've also heard that The Ivy Chronicles by Karen Quinn is good, and I really enjoyed Austenland by Shannon Hale. In addition to the Shopaholic books, I do know that Sophie Kinsella also writes under another name, Madeleine Wickham. Hope this helps! :lol:

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Ralph's Party by Lisa Jewell

 

Synopsis ~

 

Meet the residents of 31 Almanac Road … Ralph and Smith are flatmates and best mates – until, that is, the gorgeous Jemima moves in. And suddenly they’re bickering about a lot more than who drank the last beer. Of course, Jem knows that one of them is the man for her – but is it Ralph or Smith? Upstairs, Karl and Siobhan have been happily unmarried for fifteen years – until, that is, Cheri moves into the flat above theirs. Cheri’s got her eye on Karl and doesn’t see why she should let a little thing like his girlfriend stand in her way … Sooner or later its all got to come to a head – and what better place for tears and laughter, break ups and make ups than Ralph’s party?

 

Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella

 

Synopsis ~

 

Emma is sitting on a turbulent plane. She's always been a v. nervous flyer. She really thinks that this could be her last moment. So, naturally enough, she starts telling the man sitting next to her - quite a dishy American, but she's too frightened to notice -all her innermost secrets. How she scans the backs of intellectual books and pretends she's read them. How she does her hair up like Princess Leia in her bedroom. How she's not sure if she has a G-spot, and whether her boyfriend could find it anyway. How she feels like a fraud at work - everyone uses the word 'operational' all the time but she hasn't a due what it means. How the coffee at work is horrible. How she once threw a troublesome client file in the bin. If ever there was a bare soul, it's hers. She survives the flight, of course, and the next morning the famous founding boss of the whole mega corporation she works for is coming for a look at the UK branch. As he walks around, Emma looks up and realises... It's the man from the plane. What will he do with her secrets? He knows them all - but she doesn't know a single one of his. Or... does she?

 

:lol:

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The School Run & Mums @ Home by Sophie King might be her sort of thing by the sounds of it

 

Shop on Blossom Street series Debbie Macomber might be something else to try.

 

All sort of friends/relationship type read.

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Wow! thank you everyone so much for these suggestions, and thank you for taking the time to answer in such detail! :roll: There's loads here to keep her in reading material for quite a wee while :D I think I'll print off all your recommendations for her and let her see all of your opinions :lol:

 

...mind you, I do agree with catwoman, I thought mac would have been a top contributer :lol:

 

:lol:

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