To My Dearest Friends **

This chick-lit book by Patricia Volk let me down. A scribe no less than a book reviewer from THE NEW YORK TIMES wrote:

To My Dearest Friends is a cozy, kick-off-your-shoes-and-curl-up novel. If you happen to find it in an airport bookstore, you’re lucky. Just make sure you remember to catch your flight.

I found it to be a cozy, dull, help-you-go-to-sleep novel. I couldn't stand Alice, one of the novel's two protagonists and I found the other, Nanny, a natter-er! The feel good ending with its slightly odd plot twist seemed flat out saccharine.

Perhaps I am not a good candidate for chick lit--I was unable to finish another highly recommended CL book: Sheer Abandon. Whiny women or women whose lives work out to perfection by the end of the tale bore me. Kara Thrace, where are you when I need you?

The Foretelling **1/2

I read all of Alice Hoffman's books. Some, like Illumination Night, I love and have read again and again. Others, like The River King, I sped through and will never pick up again. Ms. Hoffman made her name writing books for adults but, in recent years, she has penned many a young adult novel. Of those I have read, The Foretelling is the one I like best. The story is a retelling of the Amazon women and it imagines them as warrior women whose wars cost them more than their culture can ultimately bear. If you are looking for a book to share with your daughter, this is a good one.

A Field of Darkness **5/6

It's true that I couldn't easily put down Cornelia Read's debut novel, Field of Darkness. It is also true that, at its end, I felt a bit let down. The villain was not that difficult to suss out and, more importantly, the class politics on which the novel revolves became a bit too black and white by the finale.

I did love the narrative voice of Madeleine Dare, ex-uber wealthy Long Islander, now stuck with a Naugahyde couch and a deep ambivalence about the middle class life she now shares with her hottie husband Dean about whom she hasn't a whit of ambivalence about. (The latter love/lust for a husband might be somewhat out of place in this hipster's tale, but Dean spends much of the book in the woods in Canada and thus the scenes of marital bliss are minimal.) Madeleine, in an attempt to figure out why her cousin Lapthorne's dog tags were found at the scene of a decades old murder, encounters all sorts, from Bonwit, the odious and wildly wealthy boyfriend of her mother, to Kenny, the ex-cop turned bartender who loathes the upper crust.

At the end of the tale, the villain is dead and our heroine has solved the murder. I had a blast reading the tale, I just wish the story had been a bit less simplistic in its judgements.

I'm only on page 100, but I'm loving this book