Beach Read...Sans Beach

I'm not that into chick lit. My aversion to it goes back to my days at Complete Woman when my job entailed reading at least one chick lit book a week...most of which sucked in a major way. But, there are always exceptions.

As any regular Schirel blog reader knows, I've been reading "Jane Eyre" since we started the blog. Yes, it's a long book and yes, I tend to read less in the summer, but there's no excuse for how long it's taken me to get through "Jane Eyre." I actually really like it, yet I am not even close to finished. One reason for my sluggish pace is that I got a bit distracted by Emily Giffin's new piece of chick lit: "Love the One You're With."

I discovered Emily Giffin when I was working at Complete Woman and a review copy of her first book "Something Borrowed" landed in my inbox. Unlike the usual crappy chick lit, I just couldn't put it down. I loved the characters, the relationships and mostly the plethora of Naperville references (the author grew up in Naperville).

After that, I told my sister all about the book and just like that we formed our own little Emily Giffin fan club. Since then Lisa and I have read all her books, talking about them and obsessing over all the details. For the past few years, we have a little Emily Giffin ritual. When the books come out, one of us (usually Lisa) buys it, reads it, mails it to the other and then we talk every day about what part we're at and so on. We've covered all her hits--"Something Borrowed," "Something Blue," "Baby Proof" and now "Love the One You're With"--and each one is as good as the next.

So when I heard Emily Giffin interviewed on Eric & Kathy earlier this summer promoting the new book, I called Lisa right away. She bought it right away, promising to mail it to me as soon as she was done. A week later, she was done and dying for me to read it so we could chat.

And this book did not disappoint. The beginning started off a bit cliche, and it was kind of hard to switch modes from sophisticated "Jane Eyre" to trashy chick lit. But after about 50 pages, I was hooked. It's the kind of book that you don't want to end when you see you only have 20 pages left. It's really nothing too deep and it won't change your life in any way, but it is an awesome way to escape the real world for a bit.

I won't go into all the details but if you're looking for some easy, breezy summer reading, I highly recommend any of Emily Giffin's books. Like I said, they're not great works of literature, but reading them sure beats watching "Baby Borrowers."