OK, OK, so I love Meg Cabot

I have been slightly disparaging of Chik-Lit in the past...if only in my head....really almost snobby I would say.  This was really hypocritical when you consider my absolute delight in really bad romantic comedies on the silver screen. 

Then one day I half-heartedly picked up Meg Cabot's Queen Of Babble.  It was like a package of M&M's and a Saundra Bullock movie in book form.    I read it...in barely more time than it takes to devour a bad rom-com on film, and moved onto the sequel...and the last book in the trilogy...and then The Boy Next Door.  the thing is, the lady can really write some very engaging characters, and while the plot line is totally While You Were Sleeping sans soundtrack, the actual writing is completely enjoyable!  I mean it, I felt guilty for the first three books, but I have come to terms with the fact that I absolutely adore Meg Cabot. 

OK so the plots are not earth shattering, like my friend Liz has said of many things, it's not going to change your life... but you will be entertained and you will laugh and every time you close her book you will have a goofy grin.  Can't be helped.   Also, she CAN write people.  Even the Boy Next Door Series, all told through emails, which sounded horrid to me upon first thought, flows just fine.   She can bring a story to life and successfully suspend any disbelief you might like to have in the face of French chateaus or millionaires in disguise mixed together with small-town mid-western girls  or secret princesses from the bay area. 

Some authors do all plot, no style.  Some do all style, no plot.  Ms. Cabot does lovable characters, fun dialogue, and grin-inducing stream-of-consciousness with a great eye for the dynamics of friendship all tied up in lighthearted plots that you are pretty certain will turn out OK.   Pick one up.  You won't regret it.  You read it not because you don't really know what's going to happen, but because the trip to the end is so much fun and the characters who take that trip with you are delightfully entertaining.

Disclaimer: If you have a Y chromosome, and this is not painfully obvious already, you should probably skip Cabot.  It might make you want to stab your eyes out, I mean come on, it is called chick-lit for a reason.  Signature Meg Cabot is best approached by one who can watch Mansfield Park twice in a 24 hour period, and quote Dirty Dancing or Drive Me Crazy without any intentional irony.