40. Queen of Babble

This was a quick, cute read. Kinda predictable but still good... Lizzie reminds me a lot of Becky Bloomwood (Shopaholic) and I look forward to reading this sequel as I've read those...

Here's a description from B&N.com:

Lizzie Nichols has a problem, and it isn't that she doesn't have the slightest idea what she's going to do with her life, or that she's blowing what should be her down payment on a cute little Manhattan apartment on a trip to London to visit her long-distance boyfriend, Andrew. What's the point of planning for the future when she's done it again? See, Lizzie can't keep her mouth shut. And it's not just that she can't keep her own secrets, she can't keep anything to herself.
This time when she opens her big mouth, her good intentions get Andrew in major hot water. Now Lizzie's stuck in London with no boyfriend and no place to stay until the departure date written on her non-changeable airline ticket.

Fortunately, Lizzie's best friend and college roommate is spending her summer in the south of France, catering weddings in a chateau. One call and Lizzie's on a train to Paris. Who cares if she speaks only rudimentary French? One glimpse of gorgeous Chateau Mirac -- not to mention gorgeous Luke, Chateau Mirac's owner -- and she's smitten.

But while most caterers can be trusted to keep a secret, Lizzie's the exception. And no sooner has the first cork been popped than Luke hates her, the bride is in tears, and it looks like Chateau Mirac is in danger of becoming a lipo-recovery spa. As if things aren't bad enough, ex-boyfriend Andy shows up looking for "closure" (or at least a loan), threatening to ruin everything, especially Lizzie's chance at ever finding real love -- unless she can figure out a way to use that big mouth of hers to save the day.

39. Room for Improvement

This one was pretty cute, a good one for fans of TLC since the main plot was a home improvement show a la trading spaces/while you were out. It was a bit racy at parts, and really funny as well. It's a good read...

Here's a review from B&N.com: Chicago interior designer Lily takes a job designing for Swap/Meet, a reality makeover TV show that pairs up singles looking for a new room and a new love interest. She thinks it's going to be simple and fun, but a half-wit host, a cranky but cute carpenter, and a diva designer make things difficult. When a playboy producer gets into the mix (and into Lily's bed), life becomes a lot more complicated. Self-proclaimed home improvement junkie and author Ballis (Sleeping Over; Inappropriate Men) has written a laugh-out-loud novel that will appeal to HGTV devotees as well as those who like their chick lit on the sexy side.

38. Between, Georgia

This one was good... really good. You should read it too. :)

Here's a review from B&N.com:

A long-standing family feud threatens to destroy a southern town. In her accomplished second novel, Jackson (Gods in Alabama, 2005) sweeps the reader away to a place where gravel crunches underfoot and the smell of corn bread wafts in the air. Between, a tiny dot on the Georgia state map, is oversized when it comes to personalities. When Ona Crabtree's vicious Doberman attacks Genny Frett, it shatters the town's harmony and reignites the embers of a bitter quarrel that began 30 years earlier with the birth of Nonny Jane. A Crabtree by blood, she was adopted by a Frett, forever placing her in limbo between the warring families. They seem to be polar opposites: The Crabtrees perch on the edge of society, taking lawlessness as their guiding principle; the Fretts, whose prosperous business has turned Between into an offbeat tourist destination, are ruled by propriety. At heart, however, the two clans are more similar than they may care to admit. Both have members with fiery tempers and capable of holding on tight to a grudge. During her childhood, Nonny became accustomed to being the prize in their bitter tug of war. Now an adult living an hour's drive away, she must come to terms with her own culpability in this horrid feud. Upon learning about the Doberman attack, she races back to Between. Her sick Aunt Genny and her aging mother aren't the only people pulling her home; the town also holds a potential sweetheart (if Nonny can make a final break with her soon-to-be-ex-husband) and a neglected niece. With her short fuse and history of bungled relationships, Nonny won't be able to broker a peace agreement and spare future generations of Between's children from this bitter fight until sheclaims ownership of her life. The plot is precise and sweet, and Jackson includes the perfect ingredients: quirky characters, a picturesque setting and ample surprises. Evocative and lovingly crafted.

37. But Inside I'm Screaming

This one was good... it took a while to read, but in the end I really liked it.

Here's a description from B&N:

But inside I'm screaming is one woman's unforgettable story about what it is to lose control as the world watches, to figure out what went so very wrong and to accept an imperfect life in a world that demands perfection.

While breaking the hottest news story of the year, broadcast journalist Isabel Murphy falls apart on live television in front of an audience of millions. She lands at Three Breezes, a four-star psychiatric hospital nicknamed the "nut hut," where she begins the painful process of recovering the life everyone thought she had.

But accepting her place among her fellow patients proves difficult. Isabel struggles to reconcile the fact that she is, indeed, one of them, and faces the reality that in order to mend her painfully fractured life she must rely solely on herself.

36. Right Before Your Eyes

This was good chick lit. The storyline was a bit different, the writing was smart and fast and the main character and one of her love interestes reminded me a lot of Luke and Lorelai on Gilmore Girls which of course is one of my all time favorites.

Here's a description from B&N.com:

Outspoken playwright Liza Weiler left Yale with everything she thought she needed to make her mark on the New York stage. So why, nearly a decade later, is she still waiting for her “real” life to finally begin? But like any great drama, Liza’s life only needs one good twist. And that’s what happens when she turns her ankle on the way out of a downtown nightspot and falls into the arms of a suspiciously gallant Wall Street prince and a practically perfect ER doc. Suddenly Liza not only has a couple of men in her life, but her play has fallen into the hands of a über-hip theater director. Now Liza’s about to discover how much mess she can make of a seemingly good thing…and how terrifying, slightly tragic, and utterly hilarious a little success can be.

35. Promise Not to Tell

This one was a bit suspense a bit ghost story and a bit of a family drama all wrapped up in one. It was a fast and intense read and I totally recommend it.

Here's a review from B&N.com:

Ghost sightings and a copycat murder cause residents of a small town to revisit a 30-year-old crime. Narrator Kate Cyphers, a middle-aged Seattle school nurse, returns in November 2002 to the Vermont hippie commune where she was raised. She's there to look in on her elderly mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's. But the night she arrives, a teenaged girl is murdered in exactly the manner Kate's childhood friend Del was killed three decades earlier. Interspersed chapters flash back to 1971, when Kate first met Del, who lived on a dilapidated farm with her abusive father and her older brother Nicky. Kate became close to Del, but she didn't dare be openly friendly toward someone taunted by the more popular students as "Potato Girl." Back in 2002, both Nicky and 12-year-old Opal, the dwindling commune's sole remaining child, tell Kate that they have seen visions of Del and think her ghost may be behind the new killing.

Meanwhile, Kate's mother is acting stranger than usual, stealing off in the night and referencing things that only Del could have known. The most definitive link between the two murders is a section of skin cut from each of the victims' chests; only Kate knows that Del had the letter M tattooed on that spot. Clues point variously to Zack Messier, a former commune member who had affairs with Del, Nicky and Kate's mother; to Mike Shane, a classmate who once wrote love notes to Del and now owns a tattoo parlor; and to Ron Mackenzie, the old school-bus driver who, though incoherent, seems to know more than he should. And we start to wonder about Kate when her Swiss Army Knife turns out to have been used to slit a cat's throat-especially since she told us on the novel's first pagethat she'd just killed someone. Well-plotted suspenseful fun.

34. Summer People

I liked this one and didn't at the same time. I think I've gotten really used to reading books that tell the story from multiple perspectives so reading a story that was only told from one character's perspective really seemed to be missing something.

Overall it wasn't bad, and i can see what Groh was trying to do with the lack of closure ending, but I'm a big fan of closure so...

Here's a review from B&N.com:

Groh's debut, a fish-out-of-water story about a Cleveland college dropout who spends a summer caring for an elderly woman in a tony Maine beach town, is neither inspiring nor disappointing. Nathan Empson lands in Brightonfield Cove, Maine, with the intention of sorting out his life—his last relationship faltered, he dropped out of college, and he wants to be a graphic novelist—while caring for Ellen Broderick, an ailing elderly Cleveland woman who summers there. His caretaker responsibilities are more demanding than he'd imagined, and through time spent with Ellen, Nathan befriends Eldwin Lowell, an Episcopalian pastor with a drinking problem and a depressed wife, and Leah, the nanny to Eldwin's children who becomes the necessary love interest. As the weeks tick by, Nathan learns intriguing bits about Ellen's past, agonizes over his romantic and artistic woes and, among other things, gets beat up and watches a house burn down. It's a solidly good book.

33. Whitethorn Woods

This is Maeve Binchy's newest and while it seems to have great reviews on B&N.com I have to say it is my least favorite of hers by far. I thought there were too many characters and the plot was way to loose. It lost my attention numerous times but I had gotten a hundred or so pages into it and didn't want to stop. I liked the way it ended, and there were certainly good parts and good characters in between but overall I have to say I am not a fan of this one.

Here's the description from B&N:

Maeve Binchy once again brings us an enchanting book full of the wit, warmth, and wisdom that have made her one of the most beloved and widely read writers at work today.When a new highway threatens to bypass the town of Rossmore and cut through Whitethorn Woods, everyone has a passionate opinion about whether the town will benefit or suffer. But young Father Flynn is most concerned with the fate of St. Ann’s Well, which is set at the edge of the woods and slated for destruction. People have been coming to St. Ann’s for generations to share their dreams and fears, and speak their prayers. Some believe it to be a place of true spiritual power, demanding protection; others think it’s a mere magnet for superstitions, easily sacrificed. Not knowing which faction to favor, Father Flynn listens to all those caught up in the conflict, and these are the voices we hear in the stories of Whitethorn Woods—men and women deciding between the traditions of the past and the promises of the future, ordinary people brought vividly to life by Binchy’s generosity and empathy, and in the vivacity and surprise of her storytelling.

32. Little Pink Slips

This was chick lit about the magazine industry. It had its good parts, but there were others where i was just wanting it to be over... i wouldn't say don't read it, but i don't really strongly suggest it either....

From B&N.com:

On the towering stilettos of The Devil Wears Prada comes a biting, mordantly funny debut novel about the extremely unladylike business of publishing a very ladylike magazine.

Once there was a little girl from Fargo, North Dakota, named Maggie Goldfarb who grew up, moved to Manhattan, and morphed into Magnolia Gold, the highly paid editor in chief of Lady magazine. With a corner office, a designer wardrobe, and dozens of loyal employees, Magnolia has been hired to update the dowager of women's magazines. She's on her way to giving Lady a face-lift when she is ignominiously replaced by Bebe Blake, a brash television personality who remakes the magazine in her own hilariously inappropriate image. With her ketchup-red hair, skintight clothes, and penchant for "boy toys," Bebe is more out of control than a speeding limo.

Maddeningly unpredictable, she confounds everyone at the newly christened Bebe with her personal vision of what a women's magazine should be, and baffles them further with her bawdy sense of humor and over-the-top generosity.

Shunted off to the darkest corners of executive purgatory-an overlooked back office she shares with a cockroach or two-Magnolia seethes from the sidelines as Bebe turns her beloved, once-profitable Lady into a sideshow. As things go from bad to worse, Magnolia fears that her career will never recover, but even she can't predict how deeply satisfying her eventual triumph will be. And not just at work: amidst the frenzy of backstabbing at the office, Magnolia finds Mr. Right in a city of Mr. Not-Quites.

Inspired by real-life events, Little Pink Slips is about the fall, rise, and sweet revenge of a woman who witnesses corporate shenanigans at their most flagrant. Filled with gossipy revelations about celebrity obsession and behind-the-scenes details of the media business in all its malfeasant glory, this novel is delicious, can't-stop-reading fun.