102. Heiress for Hire

This was a quick, cute and quite predictable read I got from the library yesterday...

Here's the description from BN.com:

Chicago socialite Amanda Delmar thought spending the summer in Cuttersville-Ohio's most haunted town-would be a hoot, until dearold-Dad cut her off. Now Amanda has to do the unthinkable and get... A JOB. Her attempts at joining the job market would crack up farmer Danny Tucker, if he weren't so turned on by the skinny, bronzed blonde. Hiring Amanda to babysit his baby girl may not be the smartest thing Danny has ever done. But seeing how she and her couture-clad poodle bring a smile to his shy daughter's face makes it all worthwhile. Now all Danny has to figure out is how to keep Amanda at arm's length, when she has already wriggled her way into his heart.

101. Always and Forever

I liked this one - it was a pretty good chick lit read. And it was long, which is a plus when I'm buying the book! :)

Here's the description from B&N:

When the going gets tough...

In the Irish town of Carrickwell, with its lush, endlessly rolling hills and authentic country tranquility, three women's lives are anything but calm. There's Mel, a compulsively ambitious mother/publicity manager at a high-powered PR firm -- living proof that balancing motherhood and a full-time job is no walk in the park. The hot-headed, indomitable Cleo, just out of college with a degree in hotel management, would like nothing better than to modernize and revive her family's dwindling hotel -- but faces a constant battle with her old-fashioned parents. And finally, there's the stylish, sweet-tempered Daisy, a self-consciously curvy fashion buyer for an upscale clothing boutique, who has been struggling -- and longing -- to have a baby with her absolutely perfect boyfriend. Although unconnected, these three women have one thing in common: they all need a break from their stressful lives.

...these tough gals hit the nearest spa!

So each one sets out for a little R & R at the new Clouds Hill spa, built by an American woman with her own secret turmoil. It is there that Mel, Cleo, and Daisy meet -- their worlds and troubles colliding -- forming an intimate bond that helps them to realize what matters most in life, always and forever.

100. The Spinster Sisters

This was a good chick lit read. I definitely recommend it along with Ballis' other books. The characters are realistic, not stupid, fluffy, annoying women like you find in a lot of these types of books.

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

Jodi and Jill Spingold are the Spinster Sisters. With a radio show, speaking engagements, DVDs, and two bestselling books, they've built a thriving cottage industry helping other single women find happiness. Their futures have never been brighter-until Jill turns out the lights on Jodi by announcing her engagement.

Jodi is stunned. How can they be the Spinster Sisters if one of them is married? Complicating things is her own love life, involving three vastly different paramours offering three different kinds of happiness-none of which Jodi is sure she wants. And her ex-husband, backed by his lawyer girlfriend, may be angling for a piece of the Spinster Sisters empire.

Now, Jodi must make some tough decisions, keep the business afloat, and get to the altar to stand by her sister-even if means that from now on she'll be single all by herself.

99. Lost and Found

I liked this one, a lot. The back cover of the book is misleading so the story wasn't what I expected, but it was a page turner for sure. I was drawn into the various characters and really couldn't put the book down.

Rather than the misleading description, here's a review from B&N.com:

Twelve contestants on a round-the-world scavenger hunt compete for reality-TV fame and a million-dollar jackpot. The latest reality-TV show to go into production, Lost and Found is down to its last six pairs of contestants. Cameramen and sound crew trail each duo as they careen through international airports lugging a parrot in a cage, an aviator helmet and a ski pole, en route to clues that will lead them to other equally hard-to-travel-with objects. What with jet lag, drastic time-zone changes and the grueling challenges of the intermittent daredevil rounds (milking rattlesnakes, being buried to the neck in hot sand), relations between team members are frayed: 18-year-old Cassie and her newly slimmed-down, long-widowed mother Laura are NOT TALKING about the baby Laura carried unnoticed to term and gave up for adoption; Juliet and Dallas, former child stars, find the spotlight isn't big enough for both of them; Carl and Jeff, brothers both recently divorced, disagree as to whether their lifelong joke-meister routines are appreciated by the others; Betsy and Jason, former high-school sweethearts reunited for the trip, learn that they've long outgrown each other; Trent and Riley, techno-whizzes who caught the dot.com wave and bailed in advance of the crash, are having trouble with the mundane; and Justin and Abby, both "ex-gays," now born-again Christians, discover that their marriage to each other hasn't put a stop to "sinful desire." As the teams decode rhymed clues that send them from a Cairo nightclub to a Shinto palace in Japan, and further on around the globe, the show's producers manipulate contestants' exhaustion to orchestrate juicy confrontations for the cameras. Told fromdifferent characters' points of view, this novel manages, despite its madcap premise and full-frontal exposure of crass American greed, to deliver several sympathetic characters. Given the high-concept premise, Parkhurst (The Dogs of Babel, 2003) has avoided the pitfall of simply engineering a joyride, and written a funny second novel that surpasses her first.

The story doesn't include details from all of these characters but does alternate between first person accounts from 7 of them. I would have liked to see a little more from some, a little less from others, but in the end, it was a really good book and I definitely recommend it.

98. The Dominant Blonde

This was the third book I've read by this author and by far the worst of the three. Last night's read - also by Kwitney - was really good, this one, not so good.

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

Blond and a size ten for the first time in her life, Lydia may actually have gotten this love thing right this time. Or not. After a run of bad career and dating decisions, Lydia Gold is ready for a vacation from her life. So what if the Caribbean resort's a little shabby and the boyfriend's not the lover of her dreams. This time around, Lydia's experiencing what it's like to have someone madly in love with her.

But when Abe doesn't return from a scuba dive, Lydia discovers some decidedly unsavory facts. Abe has embezzled three million dollars of her family's money. And he may not be as dead as she's beginning to wish he were.

Lydia's best chance for finding her missing boyfriend is Liam MacNally, a rugged, sexy former NYPD search and rescue diver and reluctant romantic. Liam wants nothing more than to sit on the beach with a Hemingway novel in one hand and a beer in the other.

But sometimes it takes a little danger to bring you to your senses....

97. Flirting in Cars

This was a really cute chicklit read for a cold winter Friday night. Kinda predictable, but most chick lit is, I thought the male lead was a really interesting character and pretty uncommon in the chicklit realm.

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

An accomplished journalist, Zoë Goren can't drive and she doesn't cook. But that's never been a problem in Manhattan, where the streets are filled with taxis and takeout restaurants, and a busy single mother can find everything she needs right at her fingertips. In fact, Zoë can't imagine living or working anyplace else. But when Zoë's daughter is diagnosed with dyslexia, she decides to make the ultimate sacrifice, moving two hours from Manhattan in order to enroll Maya in an excellent school for children with learning differences. Stranded in a rural paradise, Zoë must grapple with isolation, coyote howls, and the lack of good delivery services. But when she decides to overcome her fear of driving and take lessons, she meets Mack, an unnervingly attractive townie, back from the war in Iraq and trying to adjust to civilian life. With a budding new romance and a reporting gig for the local paper, Zoë just might survive in the wilderness of small-town America after all.

96. Nice Girls Finish First

This one was incredibly predictable, but cute. I got it for $3 at the discount book store and it was definitely worth the sticker price. :)

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

From the author of the zany debut, American Idle, comes a hilarious novel about learning how to be yourself-even if it kills you.Kirby Green didn't get to be a Vice President of Marketing by being nice. But when she fires her entire staff within a few weeks (they all deserved it, really), her new boss is hardly impressed. Wanting to prove his point, he issues a bet: If Kirby can get someone-anyone-to call her nice, she can take that long-awaited dream vacation to Italy with her best friend, Jules. If she can't, she can kiss the Coliseum goodbye. Oh, and her job too. Now Kirby has exactly thirty days to bully someone into saying she's nice-and to show her boss who's boss. If she doesn't fall hard for him first...

95. Mommy Tracked

This was a quick, cute chick-lit read. The characters all had flaws which made them less than perfect and therefore likeable.

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

Praised for her “smart, funny, sexy, and refreshingly real” novels, author Whitney Gaskell delivers a warm, witty, and wise new story of four women coping with the challenges of motherhood, men, and each other.

For Anna, Grace, Juliet, and Chloe, the idyllic town of Orange Cove, Florida, is home…but even in paradise,balancing the challenges of motherhood and life is never easy.

With a son in the throes of the Terrible Twos, divorced restaurant critic Anna has too much on her plate to reenter the frightening world of dating—no matter how expertly her new admirer wines and dines her….Grace has three beautiful daughters and the perfect husband, yet she’s increasingly obsessed with one nagging flaw: her excess baby weight…. Ambitious Juliet is desperate to make partner at her law firm. Fortunately, her husband stays home with their twins. But at the office, Juliet is finding more than work to occupy her time....When newest mom Chloe gives birth, her husband seems indifferent to parenting their son. Chloe is so overwhelmed that she finds herself slipping into a nasty habit she thought she’d overcome.…

Filled with humor, charm, and richly developed characters, Mommy Tracked illuminates four friends’ intertwining lives—and their joys and mistakes along the way.

94. Big Boned

This was the sequel to Size 12 is Not Fat and Size 14 is Not Fat Either. It was cute. I didn't like it as much as the first two, but still a quick, cute read.

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

Cabot's cute third crime fest featuring Heather Wells, teen pop sensation turned 20-something college student (last seen in 2006's Size 14 Is Not Fat Either), tackles the recent graduate student union controversy at NYU-like New York College head-on. Heather is paying her tuition by working at the college's Fischer Hall, a residence hall nicknamed "Death Dorm" after several recent murders. She's also semisecretly dating Tad Tocco, her remedial math prof, while pining for her neighbor and true love, Cooper, a PI who's not happy about Tad but has difficulty expressing his feelings. When Fisher Hall's interim director, Dr. Owen Veatch, is murdered, Sebastian Blumenthal, a Graduate Student Collective protest leader, becomes the prime suspect. A tip that Blumenthal is innocent leads Heather into some tight spots. Thankfully, Tad has coaxed her into working out occasionally, and she's more than able to squirm out of trouble while never losing that perky princess Cabot vibe that keeps fans coming back for more.

93. Identical Strangers - A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited

This was a really good book - an amazing story and it was filled with lots of interesting stories about nature versus nuture.

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

Elyse Schein had always known she was adopted, but it wasn’t until her mid-thirties while living in Paris that she searched for her biological mother. When Elyse contacted her adoption agency, she was not prepared for the shocking, life-changing news she received: She had an identical twin sister. Elyse was then hit with another bombshell: she and her sister had been separated as infants, and for a time, had been part of a secret study on separated twins.

Paula Bernstein, a married writer and mother living in New York, also knew she was adopted, but had no inclination to find her birth mother. When she answered a call from the adoption agency one spring afternoon, Paula’s life suddenly divided into two starkly different periods: the time before and the time after she learned the truth.

As they reunite and take their tentative first steps from strangers to sisters, Paula and Elyse are also left with haunting questions surrounding their origins and their separation. They learn that the study was conducted by a pair of influential psychiatrists associated with a prestigious adoption agency. As they investigate their birth mother’s past, Paula and Elyse move closer toward solving the puzzle of their lives.

In alternating voices, Paula and Elyse write with emotional honesty about the immediate intimacy they share as twins and the wide chasm that divides them as two complete strangers. Interweaving eye-opening studies and statistics on twin science into their narrative, they offer an intelligent and heartfelt glimpse into human nature.

Identical Strangers is the amazing story of two women coming to terms with the strange andunbelievable hand fate has dealt them, an account that broadens the definition of family and provides insight into our own DNA and the singularly exceptional imprint it leaves on our lives.