Friday, September 28, 2007

Smart Girls Like Me-Diane Vadino

Smart Girls Like Me
Diane Vadino
Dunne, Oct 2007, $23.95
ISBN: 9780312374754

As the millennium counts down, twenty four Betsy Nilssen feels lonely as her best friend Bridget Callahan is marrying a medical hunk on some exotic privately owned South Pacific rock. As the maid of honor, Betsy will be there, but she would rather be at a swinging New Year’s Eve Party rather than attend a wedding unescorted.

At the same time as 1999 counts down, she fears the end of days will begin on January 1 so she has filled her Manhattan apartment with non perishable food and frets over Y2K shutting down the world. However, the first bright spot occurs when Ryan Wells returns from Japan to work at the same place that bores her since he left. She is attracted to him and him to her. As they begin to see one another and she dreams he will accompany her to Bridget’s wedding, she learns he is also sleeping with their boss Eva. Hurt and despondent as she was sure he was the one, she quits her quits her job and moves back to her parents’ house in the burbs. Betsy fails Bridget until all hell breaks out between the once best friends in the tropics.

SMART GIRLS LIKE ME is an engaging chick lit tale because of the witty cheeky asides, barbs and skin removing hits tossed like hand grenades by a biting Betsy. Her observations peel away the veneer of polite packaging from her musing that a wedding invitation is actually an overdraft credit card to what happens to best of female friends when a third party nukes the relationship dynamics. Although the plot is thinner than Twiggy ever was, fans will enjoy this intelligent look at the impact of a fiancé on the relationship between best friends.

Harriet Klausner

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