43. The Best Day of Someone Else's Life

this was cute... it took me awhile to get into it, but in the end I liked the main character and how things turned out. And the fact that it was set in DC certaintly didn't hurt. :)

Here's a description from B&N:

Despite being cursed with a boy's name, Kevin "Vi" Connelly is seriously female and a committed romantic. The affliction hit at the tender age of six when she was handed a basket of flower petals and ensnared by the "marry-tale." The thrill, the attention, the big white dress—it's the Best Day of Your Life, and it's seriously addictive. But at twenty-seven, with a closetful of pricey bridesmaid dresses she'll never wear again, a trunkful of embarrassing memories, and an empty bank account from paying for it all, the illusion of matrimony as the Answer to Everything begins to fray. As her friends' choices don't provide answers, and her family confuses her more, Vi faces off against her eminently untrustworthy boyfriend and the veracity of the BDOYL.
Eleven weddings in eighteen months would send any sane woman either over the edge or scurrying for the altar. But as reality separates from illusion, Vi learns that letting go of someone else's story to write your own may be harder than buying the myth, but just might help her make the right choices for herself.

42. Learning Curves

This one was cute, and again, not quite as much chick lit fluff while still being decidedly chick lit.

Here's the description:

Jennifer Bell used to travel the planet with her boyfriend, fighting the good fight for mother Earth. But after the breakup (not a good fight), Jen moved back to London to work for another mother: her own. Harriet Bell founded Green Futures, a consulting firm, after splitting up with Jen's big-shot father, who runs a rival (and Harriet thinks corrupt) company. But Harriet can't expose his crimes without proof. And she wants Jen to find some.Since Jen hasn't seen her dad in more than fifteen years, it's a snap to infiltrate his company . . . under an assumed name, of course. Soon she's worming her way into the good graces of the company's managers to find evidence of wrongdoing. What she discovers is that her father's world is a whole lot different from her own-filled with Palm Pilots, MBAs, martini lunches, designer suits, and Daniel Peterson, a guy who puts the gorge in gorgeous. Suddenly Jen is torn between Birkenstocks and Jimmy Choos, tree-hugging and air-kissing. Could it be that her Big Bad Dad isn't the monster her mom made him out to be? Or is Jen simply being seduced by the power of hard deals, hot nights, and wads of cash? Only time will tell-preferably from a Cartier watch on the wrist of Daniel Peterson. . . .

41. Love the One You're With

I really liked this one because it wasn't typical chick lit. The main character was real, not chick lit fluff. She wasn't perfect, she had real emotions and had to make a hard choice. You didn't always like what she did and she made some really bad choices but... again, it was real.

Here's the description from B&N:

Ellen's relationship to Andy doesn't just seem perfect on the surface, it really is perfect. She loves his family, and everything about him, including that he brings out the best in her. That is, until Ellen unexpectedly runs into Leo. The one who got away. The one who brought out the worst in her. The one she can't forget. This is the story about why we chose to love the ones we love, and why we just can't forget the ones who aren't right for us.

Emily Giffin brings both humor and heart to her novels and has an uncanny ability to tap into the things women are really thinking and feeling. With LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH, she proves, once again, why she is the fastest rising star of women's fiction writing today.

40. The Manny

Total and complete chick lit fluff. Exactly what I was looking for...

Here's the description from B&N:

What’s a Park Avenue working mom to do when her troubled son desperately needs a male role model and her husband is a power workaholic? If she’s like the gutsy heroine of Holly Peterson’s astute new comedy of manners among the ill-mannered elite, she does what every other woman on the block does. She hires herself a “manny.”

A solid middle-class girl from Middle America, Jamie Whitfield isn’t “one of them” but she lives in “the Grid,” the wealthiest acre of real estate in Manhattan, where big money and big media collide. And she has most everything they have–a big new apartment, full-time help with her three children, as well as her very own detached Master of the Universe attorney husband. What she doesn’t have, however, is a full-time father figure for their struggling nine-year-old son, Dylan. But the rich haven’t yet encountered a problem they can’t hire someone else to solve.

Enter the manny.

At first the idea of paying a man to provide a role model for Dylan sounds too crazy to be true. But one look at Peter Bailey is enough to convince Jamie that the idea may not be quite so insane after all. Peter is calm, cool, competent, and so charmingly down-to-earth, he’s irresistible. And with the political sex scandal of the decade propelling her career as a news producer into overdrive, and her increasingly erratic husband locked in his study with suspicious files, Jamie is in serious need of some grounding.

Peter reminds her of everything she once was, still misses, and underneath all the high-society glitz, still is. But will the new manny in her life put the groundback beneath her feet, or sweep her off them?

39. Special Siblings: Growing Up with Someone with a Disability

I read this one for work - we might have the author come speak at an event in the fall. It was really interesting and a good resource for siblings of those with disabilities.

Here's a review from Amazon:

For siblings of those with physical, mental, or emotional disabilities, here is helpful advice, comfort, and the company of others who've been there. McHugh (formerly an editor at Woman's World and Cosmopolitan, and a frequent New York Times contributor) grew up with a mentally disabled brother for whom she became responsible as an adult after their mother died. McHugh doesn't shrink from the tough issues, even when looking at her own actions. Mostly, she reports, she blocked her brother and his problems out of her life as much as possible. So on one level, this is about McHugh's own journeyone viewed wrenchingly from another angle when one of her own children becomes blind and has a leg amputated as a result of complications from diabetes. But moving on from her own experience, McHugh offers information, understanding, and resources for others, on a wide range of issues: from childhood fears about the parents marriage, to troubles in ones own marriage caused by caring for a disabled sibling, to the urge to somehow make it all better (``For a sibling, there is nothing more painful than watching your mother's heart break because one of her children is wounded''). McHugh considers needs and problems for each age and developmental group, from childhood on. Real help, real comfort for those personally affected.

38. A Tale of Two Sisters

I liked this one, but didn't love it. It took me forever to read. As in I've owned it since last summer maybe and started it once or twice but never got through the first 50 pages until recently. Not bad, it just didn't draw me right in.

Here's the description from B&N:

The bestselling author of Getting Over It and Running in Heels, a writer who "excels at creating winning characters and placing them in artfully crafted muddles" (Florida Sun-Sentinel) has created an unforgettable story of siblings in the best of times and the worst of times in London.

Lizbet and Cassie are sisters and, though they've always wanted different things, best friends as well. But that's about to change.

Cassie is skinny, clever, charismatic, successful-every not-so-perfect girl's worst nightmare. The one defect in her quality-controlled life may be her marriage.

Lizbet is plumper, plainer, dreamier. She's desperate to make her name as a journalist, but is stuck writing embarrassing articles on sex for a men's magazine. Her one achievement is her relationship with Tim, who thinks she's amusing and smart-even when she asks ditzy questions.

Confronted by challenges that they never asked for, enticed by new loves, and forced apart by mistakes not their own, will Cassie and Lizbet ever figure out how to get back to the simple goodness of their sisterhood, even as their lives take them on a collision course of heartache and new beginnings?

37. Nice to Come Home To

I really liked this one. Especially since it was set in DC and Rehoboth!! I love it when the books I read talk place in places I know. Although I was a bit annoyed when she said she was on the BW Parkway to get to the beach - that isn't the road she should have been on... but oh well. :)

I definitely recommend this one - it's cute chick lit with lots of interesting characters.

Here's a review from B&N:

Though she's methodically navigated 36 years by making lists and plans, D.C. resident Prudence Whistler's carefully constructed life is about to get shaken up. She's let go from the nonprofit job that never did much to fulfill her in the first place. Then Rudy-who she's finally decided will suffice as "The One"-condescendingly dumps her. But before she has too much time to stew, her loved ones rally 'round: catty, coupled college friends; her younger sister, Patsy, the unmarried mother of a two-year-old; and John Owen, the in-divorce-proceedings diner owner Pru first encounters while schlepping Rudy's television out to the curb. This crew's the catalyst for a series of adventures and lifestyle shakeups that has retail-addict Pru wondering whether her love for fashion could deliver more than the latest Marc Jacobs dress. And then there's the ongoing coffee klatch at John's diner that inspires the big question: is Pru in the market for "getting-each-other-through-a-bad-time-love" with John, or is it time to stick her neck out for "real-love love"? Readers may find Pru's early bad luck streak contrived, but as her lovable friends and neighbors spring into action, the well-written story rounds out and rolls toward a satisfying finish.

36. Mr. Maybe

I'm still trying to be frugal and therefore re-reading things from my bookshelves that I haven't looked at in years. Since my good memory does not extend to what I read it isn't really like re-reading with most since I don't really remember them. :)

This one was cute, but 100% predictable. I mean, most chick lit is but really, from the very beginning you know exactly how it will end.

Anyway, here's the description:

To Libby Mason, Mr. Right has always meant Mr. Rich. A twenty seven-year-old publicist, she's barely able to afford her fashionable and fabulous lifestyle and often has to foot the bill for dates with Struggling Writer Nick, a sexy but perpetually strapped-for-cash guy she's dating (no commitments – really).

35. Certain Girls

A follow up to Good In Bed, I wish I would have re-read that one before I read this just as a refresher on the characters and their drama. I liked this one, but it got dramatically and suddenly sad which I can't stand about a book. If I know the sadness is coming I can totally handle it, but out of the blue sadness, especially when I'm reading in Barnes & Noble is just no good!

Anyway, here's the description from B&N:

Readers fell in love with Cannie Shapiro, the smart, sharp-tongued, bighearted heroine of Good in Bed who found her happy ending after her mother came out of the closet, her father fell out of her life, and her ex-boyfriend started chronicling their ex-sex life in the pages of a national magazine.

Now Cannie's back. After her debut novel -- a fictionalized (and highly sexualized) version of her life -- became an overnight bestseller, she dropped out of the public eye and turned to writing science fiction under a pseudonym. She's happily married to the tall, charming diet doctor Peter Krushelevansky and has settled into a life that she finds wonderfully predictable -- knitting in the front row of her daughter Joy's drama rehearsals, volunteering at the library, and taking over-forty yoga classes with her best friend Samantha.

As preparations for Joy's bat mitzvah begin, everything seems right in Cannie's world. Then Joy discovers the novel Cannie wrote years before and suddenly finds herself faced with what she thinks is the truth about her own conception -- the story her mother hid from her all her life. When Peter surprises his wife by saying he wants to have a baby, the family is forced to reconsider its history, its future, and what it means to be truly happy.

Radiantly funny and disarmingly tender, with Weiner's whip-smart dialogue and sharp observations of modern life, Certain Girls is an unforgettable story about love, loss, and the enduring bonds of family.

34. Change of Heart

Jodi Picoult's latest is just as emotionally charged and full of hard questions as her previous work. While I suspected one plot twist early on the ending still took me by surprise. I definitely recommend this one as a thought provoking read.

Rather than the usual description, here's a review from B&N:

Picoult bangs out another ripped-from-the-zeitgeist winner, this time examining a condemned inmate's desire to be an organ donor. Freelance carpenter Shay Bourne was sentenced to death for killing a little girl, Elizabeth Nealon, and her cop stepfather. Eleven years after the murders, Elizabeth's sister, Claire, needs a heart transplant, and Shay volunteers, which complicates the state's execution plans. Meanwhile, death row has been the scene of some odd events since Shay's arrival-an AIDS victim goes into remission, an inmate's pet bird dies and is brought back to life, wine flows from the water faucets. The author brings other compelling elements to an already complex plot line: the priest who serves as Shay's spiritual adviser was on the jury that sentenced him; Shay's ACLU representative, Maggie Bloom, balances her professional moxie with her negative self-image and difficult relationship with her mother. Picoult moves the story along with lively debates about prisoner rights and religion, while plumbing the depths of mother-daughter relationships and examining the literal and metaphorical meanings of having heart. The point-of-view switches are abrupt, but this is a small flaw in an impressive book.