ChickLOL Awards 2015: Funniest Books of 2015

Last year we brought you this fantastic feature deciding your top Five funniest chick-lit titles of the year! We are back again this year, so scroll through the list to see if you've got any on your TBRs or your Read-shelf.

Funniest Book K:

Double Mint by Gretchen Archer.

It's hard for Gretchen Archer to disappoint in her funny, women sleuth series featuring the hilarious Davis Way and cast who'd thrill you with humor along with mystery from start to finish!

Funniest book C

The Vintage Guide to Love and Romance by Kirsty Greenwood.

As funny as it was entertaining. Get into the world of Jessica Beam and Matilda Beam, granddaughter and grandmother who mix up both modern rules and very archaic ones to secure them the hottest playboy in town.

Funniest Book I

The Day We Disappeared by Lucy Robinson. 

This book! Not only funny but has an amazing twist that would leave you dropping the book in shock! Follow the life of two friends running from their disastrous lives.

Funniest Book H

All Together Now by Gill Hornby.

A town with no sense-of-togetherness and nothing to their name, reunite by forming a community choir that would change the life of all its members, and the community as a whole. Very heart-warming and incredibly funny!

Funniest Book C

I Followed The Rules by Joanna Bolouri 

Besides the author being a professional comedian, She writes irresistible funny books with amazing heroines and lots of "punchlines". A newspaper columnist decides to take on a shitty dating advice book written by a cocky asshat and follows all his rules just breaking a few! A thrilling laugh-out-loud read! Funniest book of the year!

I Hope you Get them all because they are actually titles, shortlisted from many to get you laughing and laughing even when whoever you are sitting with on the train is a loud and smelly fatter! 

Book Review: The Perfect Match by Katie Fforde

MY SYNOPSIS

Imagine this: You’ve moved to a new town due to a reason you’d rather not think about. You are now an estate agent fairly happy, living with your sixty-year old aunt sipping teas in a garden of roses and all that kind.

You are good at your job, caring and loving. Not shrewd as all estate managers are pictured to be with a pitch fork. All your clients love you. And so does your boss, who you’ve indulged yourself in a two year relationship with. God knows you love him as much as he… loves himself.

So maybe if perhaps your job entails convincing old people out of their houses into retirement homes, or searching for homes for the most indecisive people on earth, or what of the stingy ones with low budgets and big dream houses, and your aunty getting involved with a younger man, or your boyfriend ACCIDENTALLY proposing to you after he’s taken you out.

Enough trouble for you to deal with!

But not when illegal criminal activities come into the picture. And your boyfriend―oops, fiancé is acting suspicious lately. God help him, you might cut his balls if he’s cheating on you!

But we all know of someone who might want to cut your balls. The reason you left your previous job. He’s back. And it seems like he’s pissed at you, for, perhaps, letting his wife abandon him?

MY REVIEW

I liked this book. The storyline was perfect. The whole girl runs away, starts a new life as an estate agent (new), finds a guy who wants her cutting carbs as much as he wants her claiming the necessary documents of a senior citizen’s house (new), aunty in love with a younger guy (new), aunty having to deal with the pain in the arse daughters of younger guy (new), then the old life comes back to cut her balls (new). Cheers to Katie Fforde, and cheers to the complications of life.──★

Told in third-person points of view narrative of Bella and Alice, her aunt, (don’t you just love reading non-gender benders?), I found each of their voices unique and personalities as well. I know writers who’d just jumble them all up that you’d think each character had a split personality of the other. But Katie Fforde handled it well. The younger audience would place their shoes in Bella’s, the thirty-something’s, and root for Alice undergoing the perils of loving a younger man, and vice versa.──★★

The characters in this book were well-crafted besides the mains. From Jane, the sweet old woman who wouldn’t let go of her house for a retirement home, To the Agnews, the indecisive couple who wanted more for less. Mrs. Macey, a cantankerous woman who wanted her house off the market quick yet didn’t consider the damp smell of cat pee was the reason no one might have wanted it. Tina, the take-charge hilarious secretary. Ed Unsworth, the dickhead who’s lived his life outsmarting people out of their homes. Dominic, the George Clooney look-alike who’s out to get our Bella’s balls (not really, and speaking metaphorically). Michael, the super-charming sweet divorcé who has the hots for Alice. Nevil, the fiancé who plans the wedding down to the gown he wants his bride wearing. I loved them all!──★★★

Humor in this book was OK. Throughout I think there were two or three really laugh-out-loud moments and lots of chuckling ones in there. ──★★★★But everyone knows I love my Women’s Fiction (or all other books) utterly hilarious, so I wished this was too.  

So my rating: Four/Five stars.

You can purchase The Perfect Match by Katie Fforde in both Kindle and Paperback (but I believe paperback does it more justice!)

Amazon:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Perfect-Match-Katie-Fforde/dp/184605656X

I recommend this book to anyone who’s always been a fan of Katie Fforde as she never disappoints in this title too. Anyone who wants to know the ins and outs of an estate agent’s life (so they can finally sympathize with the world’s most shrewd characters). Anyone who enjoys reading books about older women starting all over again in the romance department and seeking some action in their private lives as well. Anyone who wants a good suspenseful book should also read this.

My work not done here. Off to post my review on Goodreads.

Review+ INT Giveaway: Cassidy Lane: A Novel by Maria Murnane

Blurb: From the author who brought us the unforgettable Waverly Bryson and the bestselling Perfect on Paper series.

Bestselling author Cassidy Lane walks into her twentieth high school reunion with several novels under her belt, but no date on her arm, and deep down she still feels like the smart girl no one asked to the prom. Then handsome Brandon Forrester confesses his teenage crush, and soon Cassidy finds herself swept up in a modern-day fairytale romance not unlike the tales she spins for a living. While their relationship blossoms, however, the new book she’s writing isn't going as well, and for the first time in her career she considers crafting an ending that doesn't include a proverbial walk into the sunset. Contemplating the simultaneous reversal of her own romantic fortune and that of her protagonist’s is daunting, but maybe it’s time for both her writing and her personal life to take a new path. Or is it?
Filled with Murnane’s trademark wit and optimism, a charming cast of secondary characters, and loads of heart, Cassidy Lane will have you cheering for its heroine down to the very last delightful word.

                                            MY SYNOPSIS

Imagine this: What’s your stance towards high school reunions? Hesitant to attend or eager to show up? The feeling is mixed, for you actually. It’s fun to go see who’s bloated the size of a barnyard, or who became what, and who’s still a bitch. When you are forty, you look out for:

1. Who is recently divorced?

2. Who's had their face done and by whom?

3. Who is close to death, faced by an illness or is aging like a breakup letter received with ire?

Your high school life wasn’t what everyone would wish their high school life would be. You weren’t asked to Prom. You didn’t have the body of a cheerleader. You had crushes on the jocks who didn’t notice you. And even the nerds couldn’t even acknowledge you, because who would like to be a braces-wearing geek anyway? But your best pal wouldn’t let you decide against attending. So you have no option than to face your past, which was much of a blur to everyone else anyway. And hark, you are not only going a successful writer with so many books under your belt, you are going single. There’s a whole look they give to single spinsters at forty in a high school reunion and you would soon find out.

You admit to yourself, you were overreacting a bit. The high school reunion didn’t turn out bad, or great either. The cheerleaders have grown the size of Cindy Crawford’s mole. Jocks that had muscular thighs and legs as long as Lindsay Lohan’s criminal records now have arthritis. Apparently rehabs couldn’t contain the crack junkies. The dorky nerd whose proximity determines the degree of your embarrassment, is still who she is, except she might be a mother of two (equally dorky kids). The school bitch, is still pretty, plastic and divorced. But there’s someone you never noticed, someone whose transformation has taken on a ‘woah’ factor according to everyone. Brandon Forrester.

So what if you get back to New York and everything returns to normal? Your life is as solitary and mundane as ever, being a successful writer and all. Your deadline, as though it isn’t already looming, has been pushed forward. The pressure to produce something that might be your finest to date is daunting. You know reading fan mails are the only perks of your job.  But what if you open your inbox one time, and saw Brandon Forrester, an email from him. With your deadline, you can’t afford to be distracted. It isn’t an option. But what if you reply, and within a twinkling, he does back? Then the messages keep piling, and piling. Can a long distance relationship work, you begin asking yourself. And even if it can, perhaps, can you rewrite your entire high school life and get back the happy ending you missed out on when no one asked you for prom?

Cassidy Lane’s life summed up for your delight!                                        

MY REVIEW

The story-line of this book is a winner. Reunions, forty year olds, life after high school, spinsterhood. Perfect! I mean, who hasn’t wanted to find out what their high school mates have become after over twenty years. Another reason to be nuts for Murnane’s settings.──★

Everyone wants to write full-time these days, a few people have accomplished that. So the appeal this story would hold to all the wannabe full-timers, shouldn’t be debatable. Not only wannabe writers per se, on odd days who wouldn’t wish they had their work right at home. The perks are that perky. The trip to the fridge is short, you have no boss looming around to call on your mistakes, and perhaps no one to monitor if your emails are work-related, no one to tell you when you can leave work and when to actually work at work. To create a character like Cassidy who’s very relatable──on the outside appears very successful, an equation we give to all full-timers, but behind closed doors not really feel like the million-dollar book deal she is, is what would draw in readers to pick this title.──★★

The in-depth view into Cassidy’s life would also win another star from me. The thing about writing what you know really comes into play for Maria Murnane here. It’s an insightful take on what really goes on behind the pastel chick-lit covers. The struggle to stay focused, the editors who keep pushing forward the deadlines, the writers’ workshops you are invited to speak at with the pressure of what to give away and what-not-to-tell, the fear of losing your fans if you ditch the ‘walk into the sunset’ endings for a more realistic one, the fight to stay inspired always around everyone and everywhere. This book puts down the notion that after signing a book deal with a big, big Traditional Publishing house, all is roses. Perhaps the most annoying feature into that aspect of a full-time writer’s life would be the fact that, whatever happens, whatever masterpiece you create, you are always, always going to be among the D-List of celebrities (when even shits like the Jersey Shore cast are proportioning to incredible levels).──★★★

I had some fav characters that made reading this book fun. Danielle and Patti, the kickass friends, were the stars of this book. Brandon Forrester was also one of the characters I constantly looked forward to reading about. I wish like him (and me of course) all men knew women hated mixed signals and men who keep them thinking on their feet for meaning to their words.──★★★★

The humor is subtle. I loved Cassidy’s voice, very insightful, very without-the-fluff (which is basically saying, very forty). And it has been very well established I love Older Women Books.──★★★★★

The suspense in this book is very unsettling. One feature that got me glued to this book. I wanted to find out what would happen, and perhaps test its predictability. But Maria Murnane never made her plot stand out like a skanky see-through top, it was all fed at a read, no prescience by me could figure the turn of events. But thinking of it, that’s just life. A feature about this book that makes it very realistic.  I wished though, it wasn’t that rigid. I wish it was a bit predictable enough for me not to slash one of its stars into a half.──★★★★★★

So my rating: 4.5 stars!

Buy Cassidy Lane, Maria Murnane’s so-true-to-life latest on Amazon in both kindle and paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Cassidy-Lane-Maria-Murnane/dp/1477849947

B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cassidy-lane-maria-murnane/1117243364?ean=9781477849941

Three print copies are up for grabs. This is an INTERNATIONAL giveaway. Enter the rafflecopter below. a Rafflecopter giveaway

I recommend this book to anyone who loves their women’s fiction very real. Anyone who wants anything that’s not easy to predict at all. Anyone who loves their Women’s fiction with ample romance to keep them glued. Anyone who has always wondered what goes behind closed doors of very successful authors should also pick up this title.

My work not done here. Off to post my review on Goodreads.  

Review+Giveaway: The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger

Blurb: Twenty-nine-year-old Sophie Diehl is happy toiling away as a criminal law associate at an old line New England firm where she very much appreciates that most of her clients are behind bars. Everyone at Traynor, Hand knows she abhors face-to-face contact, but one weekend, with all the big partners away, Sophie must handle the intake interview for the daughter of the firm’s most important client. After eighteen years of marriage, Mayflower descendant Mia Meiklejohn Durkheim has just been served divorce papers in a humiliating scene at the popular local restaurant, Golightly’s. She is locked and loaded to fight her eminent and ambitious husband, Dr. Daniel Durkheim, Chief of the Department of Pediatric Oncology, for custody of their ten-year-old daughter Jane—and she also burns to take him down a peg. Sophie warns Mia that she’s never handled a divorce case before, but Mia can’t be put off. As she so disarmingly puts it: It’s her first divorce, too.

Debut novelist Susan Rieger doesn’t leave a word out of place in this hilarious and expertly crafted debut that shines with the power and pleasure of storytelling. Told through personal correspondence, office memos, emails, articles, and legal papers, this playful reinvention of the epistolary form races along with humor and heartache, exploring the complicated family dynamic that results when marriage fails. For Sophie, the whole affair sparks a hard look at her own relationships—not only with her parents, but with colleagues, friends, lovers, and most importantly, herself. Much like Where’d You Go, Bernadette, The Divorce Papers will have you laughing aloud and thanking the literature gods for this incredible, fresh new voice in fiction 

Debut novelist, Susan Rieger, mixes law, family and separation to tell a beautiful tale rich with insight, humor and unsettling suspense. Divorces can be sweet and thrilling too?

Imagine this: You specialize in criminal law at a big firm. You don’t necessarily get your raison d’etre practicing it. But you do it because there is no other field in law you find worthy enough. Now a big time client has brought in a case everyone specializing in civil litigation would jump at, the separation of his daughter from her husband after seventeen years of marriage. Now there’s a divorce, and there’s a divorce. So much money, so much wealth, so much property to divide which could turn nasty. No one wants to drag a divorce to the courtroom, especially the husband who can’t wait for his philandering days (with a dermatologist) to begin. A senior partner approaches you with the case because all other divorce lawyers are booked with others jetting away to visit their parents. Just an interview with a client, he tells you, no big deal. You take him up on his offer, sit through the interview with the daughter. Now all you can think of are her gestures, her humor, her references to good ol’ literature, her sophistication, her so-not-behaving-like-a-woman-who’s-being-legally-separated-from-her-husband behavior.

But still you wouldn’t take the case if you are begged to.

Then you are demanded to. You think your boss is inconsiderate when he knows your past with divorcing parents. You have to take the case, no other option for you.

Now you are dangling in the mess of a divorce. Undergoing civil litigation training, dealing with aggravating lawyers and endless negotiations, getting a whole sense of déjà vú when an eleven year-old daughter of the couple comes into the picture, fighting off opposition at work from the other office bitch who specializes in divorce cases but didn’t get this because she was off to her parents, dating a super-sweet stage-actor introduced to you by your brilliant stage-actress friend, wondering if your best-selling writer mum is “misbehaving” with your boss, dealing with clients tearing at each others throats in every sense of the word, wondering why your parents had to part away, wondering why your dad would never show any interest in you or what you do for that matter, feud after feud, negotiations after negotiations, back-to-stage-one after back-to-stage-ones. Life gets hard and hectic, as much as you try to make time for your personal life──there’s one thing, you can only keep in touch through emails. Emails everywhere, as if the pile of letters from the mail of your firm aren’t enough. Your life is as messy as a divorce.

Until you manage to sort it out, it would stay that way for over a year.

Sophie Diehl’s hectic life, summed up for your undivided attention.

──────────────

MY REVIEW

This book made me have blast! Like a grenade blast! I ah-dored every piece of it. But this blog isn’t about me, it’s about you. So this why you would love, love this title.

It’s beautiful in every sense of the word, the writing style. I loved that it was an epistolary. I have never, ever read one of these titles before. Or perhaps I have, but they weren’t as memorable as this. Divorce, social life, professional feuds all embraced in this epistolary, to give it a real feel. An effect some books with dialogue struggle to achieve.───★

The storyline was perfect. Uh-huh, Uh-huh──the storyline! It was surprising because I said earlier, written in an epistolary, blah, blah, it did have a storyline that can be easily related to. Who hasn’t gone through a divorce, or at least seen one? The effects it has on its participants and the children── even the pets! It’s mind-blowing how all this was captured in this title. The fact that it was an epistolary yet left nothing untold is what would make lovers of Women’s Fiction (and other genres) grab this title. Portrayed so real with depth that made it feel so true to life, I wonder if I’m shrieking about a storyline or rather a lifeline. ───★★

The characters in this book truly had character. I couldn’t believe anyone could execute a piece written from start-to-finish in letters but still embody the unique traits of each character. Through letters, you could tell you were reading about a strong, successful yet self-conscious Sophie Diehl. Through her letters, you could predict Maggie Pfeiffer, Sophie’s friend was the kind quick to admonish, advice type. Through her letters, you could tell Maria Meiklejohn, the client was well-poised, well-read, sharp, embodying every elegant, firm mother in their forties. Jane, the eleven year-old daughter, stuck between the divorce was intelligent, precocious, confused and hurt (much like every child in the midst of parental wars). Elisabeth Dreyfus, aka Maman, aka Sophie’s mum, was French, funny, sophisticated, exotic, and someone you’d like to take to lunch and listen to. Daniel, the client’s husband, was a moron. David, the boss and trainer, was firm but playful. Harry, Sophie’s sort-of-boyfriend, was an asshole in gentleman’s clothing. Fiona, the office bitch, was well, an office bitch. It’s a characterization party in there all through letters and I could go on and on. I loved each and everyone of them───★★★

The suspense in this book was riveting. I really wanted it to end, end, end or at least take a little break. But it kept increasing as things got complicated and complicated. I found myself rooting for Maria, hoping, praying she squeezes a chunk out of her SOB husband. If this is how divorces are, I’m not sure I have the heart to go through one. Stick with your partners (Ouch, no pun intended).───★★★★

As I said earlier, this book felt more of a literary piece than a book, more of a masterpiece than a literary piece.  References to classics that stole the hearts away of many born in the seventies and beyond (would go look ‘em up), all the subtle humor, the wisecracks, again, the writing style and the voice of each character, was breathtaking. Authors hardly get it write on their debut, but not debut novelist, Susan Rieger.───★★★★★

I talk a lot. No news. That’s why, I’m further going to:

Give this book: a whooping Five stars

Tell you to: Go buy this book in hardcover because kindle just doesn’t do it justice on....

Amozon in Hardcopy/kindle formats: http://www.amazon.com/The-Divorce-Papers-A-Novel/dp/0804137447

Amazon in audio format:http://www.amazon.com/The-Divorce-Papers-A-Novel/dp/0804166331

 

Give you a chance to: Win one of Two Hardbacks of The Divorce Papers from Crown Publishing, Random House

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Recommend this book to: Anyone who has been through a divorce or not. Anyone who wants to find the topic of divorce interesting, insightful as well as damaging and perhaps an opportunity to let go of the past and begin anew. Anyone who loves a well-written piece. Anyone less interested in material with fluff. 

My work not done here. Off to post my review on Goodreads.