Fun & Frivolous Books

Planning to head south sometime this winter to grab some sun. Here are some light and lively books to stick in your suitcase. Or you could just pretend you’re on holiday: spread some coconutty cream on your body and curl up with one of these for a couple of hours. Enjoy!

Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs by Molly Harper is my latest excursion into Vampire Literature. Some of these books are hugely fun, some just awful. Molly Harper’s writing is funny and her character, Jane Jamison is a peach. First she gets fired. Then she gets drunk. Then she gets dead… well, almost dead. Her drinking companion turns out to have been a vampire with a small crush on her and rather than let her die, he steps in. Having just been turned, she’s trying to figure out the world of the undead while dealing with a very dysfunctional family.  If you’re a fan of the Sookie Stackhouse series, you’ll like Molly Harper’s books too.

You don’t have to love vampires to love Molly Harper’s writing. If you’re not a fan of vampire genre, try And One Last Thing.  With her trademark humor, this biting social comedy tells the story of Lacey Terwilliger’s shock and humiliation over her husband’s philandering. Her response: she adds some bonus material to Mike’s company newsletter including detailed descriptions of the special brand of “administrative support” his receptionist gives him. Her vengence blows up in her face, and Lacey has become the pariah of her small Kentucky town. So Lacey retreats to her family’s lakeside cabin, only to encounter an aggravating neighbor named Monroe, a hunky crime novelist with a low tolerance for drama.

A Little Night Magic by Lucy March was light and entertaining. Olivia Kiskey has been working at the same waffle house since she was a teenager and She’s been in love with Tobias, the cook, for the last four years. Problem is, he’s never made a move. Every Saturday night, she gathers with her three best friends—Peach, Millie, and Stacy—and to drink margaritas while listening to the same old stories.  Along comes Davina Granville, a strange and mystical Southern woman who shows Olivia that there is more to her life than she ever dreamed. As Liv’s latent magical powers come to the surface, she realizes that the dark side of someone else’s magic is taking over good people in town. Now she’s in for a fight!

And for the romantics out there I give you Not Another Bad Date by Rachel Gibson, which was thoroughly entertaining. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Adele lost her true love to a conniving Queen Bee, now said Queen Bee is dead and Adele has been cursed with bad date after bad date. When her perfect sister’s life goes to hell in a handbasket, Adele steps up to care for her through her pregnancy and to watch over her daughter. Returning home to where she grew up – and fled after she was unceremoniously dumped – Adele runs into Zach Zemaitis, a former pro football star and Adele’s one true love. Is this destined to be yet another bad date?

In Criminal by Karin Slaughter Will Trent is an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation who is being kept off an important case by his supervisor and mentor, deputy director Amanda Wagner. Will can’t figure out why… and then… the two literally collide in an abandoned orphanage they have both been drawn to for different reasons. Decades before – when Will’s father was imprisoned for murder – this was his home… 40 years earlier when Will Trent was born, Amanda was just starting her career at the Atlanta police department. One of her first cases was to investigate a brutal crime. Now that case has come back to life, and it is intertwined with the long-held mystery of Will’s birth and parentage.

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