QUEEN OF BABBLE IN THE BIG CITY

A silly, predictable follow-up to Queen of Babble (2006) about a chatty chick conquering Manhattan.

Oh my gosh! Lizzie Nichols’ life is soooo amazing. After a post-college trip to France, Lizzie has snagged Prince Charming—and Luke actually is a prince, but is just way too cool to make a big deal about it. Now Lizzie is living in Manhattan, absolutely the place to be if you want to start your own bridal-gown design house. And she’s living with Luke at his Fifth Avenue apartment (okay, so it belongs to his super-rich parents, but still, there’s a Renoir over the bed!). And her best friend Shari has an amazing job helping battered women overcome obstacles and stuff, and Shari’s boyfriend Chaz likes to talk about Wittgenstein, which must make him really smart. But not everything is perfect—Lizzie needs a job. Happily, Chaz finds her one answering phones at his father’s law firm and she finds a kind of internship at Monsieur Henri, redesigning old wedding gowns. Lizzie is also concerned about Shari and Chaz—they don’t seem to be in love anymore. But most distressingly, Lizzie is trying to figure out how to get Luke to propose. Like any 23-year-old unmarried woman, she’s close to becoming an old maid! Alas, Luke is so wrapped up in his pre-med studies, an engagement ring might not be under the Christmas tree this year. Not surprisingly, everything works out just beautifully, and even if Shari dumps Chaz and becomes a lesbian, that’s cool, as long as she never liked Lizzie in that way, because that would be too weird. The running joke throughout the novel is that Lizzie talks too much, but it’s no joke for the reader who is inundated with the mindless chatter of the narrator.

Tedious froth, perhaps more suitable for teens who might think this is what grown-up life is like.