Learning Curves by Gemma Townley

While Jennifer Bell’s mother is a champion of the environment, her father helps big businesses destroy the planet. This difference eventually lead to their divorce years ago. Now Jen’s mother wants Jen to infiltrate her father’s business to uncover his latest plot by posing as a student in the MBA program sponsored by her father’s business. At first, Jen feels out of place with all the future ruthless business leaders, but then she meets Daniel Peterson. With the help of Daniel, Jen slowly realizes that not all businesses are bad and finally speaks with her father for the first time since the divorce. Now can Jen bring an end to the war between her parents or will Jen find herself consumed by her parents hatred for each other.

While there is a lot of romance for a chick-lit novel, main story revolves around Jen’s relationship with her parents and how it evolves over the course of the book. Her romance with Daniel is relatively independent of the main story, but it does make the book a lot more interesting. I loved the humor that Gemma used throughout the book and found it a very good read. If you’re into chick-lit and romance, then you really should read this book.

Details: Ballantine Books, April 2007

Excellence Rating: Very Good

Steaminess Factor: Yummy

Dead End Dating by Kimberly Raye

Lil Marchette is a born vampire (as opposed to the made kind), whose reasons for living include Gucci, Christian Dior and Donna Karan. She’s rather die than wear the uniform of the family business – a lime green polo shirt with Midnight Moe’s stitched over the pocket and matching Dockers. Instead she decided to open her own business, Dead End Dating – a matchmaking service catering to both humans and vampires. But when a bounty hunter named Ty Bonner enters her life looking for a serial killer who seems to frequent dating services, Lil knows she’s in for a rough time. Even though he’s seriously hot, Lil knows dating him would be a major mistake, since he’s a made vampire and therefore can’t procreate. Still, Lil can’t help but wonder what he’d be like in bed. Now Lil finds that the serial killer is after some of her clients. Will she call for Ty’s help or will she face the killer alone, knowing that she might be his next victim?

It was bound to happen sooner or later, a real vampire chick-lit novel. Anyone who can create a character who loves Janet Evanovich is alright in my book. This is pretty funny book as you watch Lil and her obsession with designer fashions deal with all of the normal problems that anyone would face in starting a matchmaking service – providing that many of their customers only came out at night and drank blood instead of eating. This is definitely an interesting spin on the paranormal world and I can’t wait to see the next book in the series :) .

Details: Ballantine, September 2006

Bottom line: A great book