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Ladies Who Lunch - Linda Francis Lee (2006)
Also known as The Devil in the Junior League
There's a rebel in the ranks of the twinsets and pearls of the Willow Creek Junior League. This elite Texas organisation only accepts new recruits who are nominated by six members who have been known them for five years. When Junior League stalwart Fredericka Hildebrand Ware's husband goes on the run, with all her money and a mistress, she turns to the socially inferior lawyer next door for help. But he'll only help if she gets his trashy wife Nikki into the Junior League.
7/10
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Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes (1999)
Three Irish friends, Tara, Katherine and Fintan who now live in London, are out celebrating Tara's 30th birthday. Tara feels she's in the Last Chance Saloon because even though she is living with boyfriend Thomas, he is reluctant to commit. Having been burnt by another man she thought was her future, Tara is willing to put up with Thomas' cheapskate ways and criticisms about her weight - at least it's better than not having a relationship at all. Meanwhile, Katherine doesn't want a man to mess up her neatly ordered life and tries to ignore her attraction to colleague Joe. When Fintan is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, he makes the girls promise to do something for him - that'll change their lives forever.
7/10
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Late Night Talking - Leslie Schnur (2007)
Jeannie Sterling is a late-night New York radio show host, whose show Sterling Behavior targets everyday rude behaviour. She is trying to make the world a better place, one annoying person at a time. Everything from iPods at full volume, litterers, cutting in line or poor gym etiquette gets her talking turkey. In fact, she even calls a guy in a Hummer a “turkey” when he splashes water on her while she's waiting for a cab. After she disses him on air, the Hummer driver, mogul Nicholas Moss, takes over her radio station. Pushed to increase ratings, Jeannie starts acting in ways that take her ranting much too far. With a best friend keeping a secret, a boyfriend keeping library books and a misbehaving dog keeping her panties, Jeannie looks like losing everything that's important to her.
6/10
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Learning Curves: A Novel of Sex, Suits and Business Affairs
- Gemma Townley (2006)
Recently separated from her eco-warrior boyfriend, environmental activist Jennifer Bell gets caught up in a feud between her divorced parents who are rival business consultants. Her mother Harriet, convinced her ex-husband George's firm is involved in shonky construction deals in post-tsunami Indonesia, talks Jennifer into infiltrating his firm by doing her MBA at Bell Consulting. Thinking she'll hate the corporate world, Jennifer is surprised to discover she has an aptitude for the business course and also falls for guest lecturer, Daniel Peterson. She begins to realise there's two sides to every story - in this case which side should she believe?
7/10
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Lessons in Heartbreak - Cathy Kelly (2008)
Three generations of an Irish family are affected by infidelity in different ways. Izzie Silver, who works for a modelling agency in New York, meets wealthy businessman Joe at a charity lunch. He tells her his marriage is over but he's still living in his family home for his children's sake. Back in her Irish hometown Tamarin, Izzie's aunt Anneliese discovers that her husband is moving in with her best friend. But before she is able to break the news to the family matriarch Lily, the elderly woman has a stroke and slips into a coma. It is Lily's slowly revealed story, about life as a nurse in London during World War II and a secret love affair, that makes up the most interesting chapters.
7/10
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Life on the Refrigerator Door - Alice Kuipers (2007)
Claire is a 15-year-old student and her mother is a single mum who works as an obstetrician. They rarely find themselves in the same room at the same time, so they leave each other notes on the refrigerator door. What they don't realise at first is they are literally running out of time. When the mother is diagnosed with breast cancer, the notes become more poignant, especially when they realise they are wasting time arguing about Claire's boyfriend and who hasn't cleaned the rabbit's cage. It is such a short book (took me less than half an hour to read), that you feel as if you never really had the chance to get to know the characters properly. But maybe that was entirely the message the author wanted to convey.
6/10
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Life Swap - Jane Green (2005)
Vicky Townsley, features director of Poise magazine, is single, 35, lives in London and has fallen for a womanising TV star. She wants to try out a different life so in a competition she picks out Amber Winslow to swap lives with her. Amber is a married mother of two who lives in Connecticut and leads a competitive social life in the Women's League. Each will live in the other's shoes (including wearing their clothes) for a month. Is the grass really greener on the other side?
8/10
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Lipstick Jungle - Candace Bushnell (2005)
It's a jungle out there but for three New York businesswomen - magazine editor-in-chief Nico O'Neilly, movie executive Wendy Healy and fashion designer Victory Ford - they have risen to the top of their fields. Nico has a stellar career but the passion has gone out of her marriage. Will her attraction to a younger man (underwear model Kirby) derail her ambition to become the first female CEO of Splatch-Verner? Wendy, the president of Parador Pictures and mother of three, heads to Romania to sort out set problems on a potential Oscar-winning movie, as her marriage to Shane dissolves. And Victory's Fashion Week collection doesn't go down too well so she is forced into looking at partnership deals to keep her company afloat. As she starts dating cosmetic entrepreneur Lyne Bennett, she also learns lessons about what she wants from love.
6/10
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Little Earthquakes - Jennifer Weiner (2004)
One of my favourite all-time books, this is the story of three women who meet up at a prenatal yoga class. There's Becky, a plump chef who's at war with her mother-in-law; Kelly, an overachieving event planner who has to return to work after her husband loses his job; and Ayinde, who's married to basketball star Richard. Ayinde goes into labour after the class, so Kelly and Becky take her to hospital. Richard arrives just in time for the birth of Julian - smelling like perfume (. . . the things that make you go hmmm!)
9/10
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Live From New York, It's Lena Sharpe - Courtney Litz (2004)
Lena, a television producer in Manhattan, dreams about being famous. But the closest she gets to fame is working on Face-to-Face, a show about celebrities. Every guy she meets could be a potential co-star in her personal drama so she rewrites her life story to fit in with them. When she is assigned to a segment about handsome writer Colin Bates, she is drawn into his world so much that she dumps her own circle, including her best friend and ladies man Jake.
5/10
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Looking for Mr Goodbunny - Kathleen O'Reilly (2006)
Elle Sheffield may have survived redundancy, recreating herself as a life coach but her life's still far from perfect. She's in financial strife, her father's ending a 20-year jail term - and her trusty vibrator has died. But an embarrassing reunion with an old school friend outside a sex shop may just be the jumpstart her business needs.
4/10
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Losing It - Lindsay Faith Rech (2003)
Everyone thinks Diana Christopher is losing it. Especially considering she's just driven her car into the front window of a cafe. Since the death of her father in a car crash two decades before, Diana has literally become a HUGE disappointment to her mother. She is overweight, works night shift in a cafe and has never had a boyfriend. But a friendship with her elderly neighbour helps her start to shed weight and find a reason to live.
4/10
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Lost for Words - Lorelei Mathias (2007)
Daisy Allen is a sweet-natured assistant at a publishing house who is hoping to find a literary gem in the slush pile. She is also hoping her boyfriend, the smarmy Miles, will finally commit. After becoming friends with Elliot, who comes in to do work experience, she stumbles upon a partly finished manuscript from a mystery author, William. Will this book be her big break and why is the author being so secretive? Only other thing to say is I'm a bit lost for words as to why the plot was so damn predictable.
5/10
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Lost & Found - Jane Sigaloff (2003)
High-flying lawyer Sam Washington is on a flight back to London when she realises she's left her diary in a New York hotel room. As she fends off the unwanted advances of her firm's senior partner, she worries that not only could someone read her inner thoughts but there's a secret in there about her best friend EJ that the tabloids would love. When TV producer Ben Fisher turns up on her doorstep with her diary, she's suspicious that he's read it - after all he seems to know a lot about her. Does he want to get close to her because he's become smitten or does he want to reveal her embarrassing secrets?
7/10
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Love: A User's Guide - Clare Naylor (1997)
Vogue fashion assistant Amy often gets caught up in daydreams about the romantic heroes of literature. Then she meets film star Orlando Rock, who has played lots of these heroes on stage and screen. While she swoons, he decides she's just the non-celebrity kind of girl he's after. But Amy soon begins to get seduced by fame. Will stepping into the limelight, and into the pages of Hello, lose Amy her dream man?
5/10
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Love Bug - Zoe Barnes (2002)
Laurel Page has swapped cyberspace for managing an old-fashioned dating agency. And she's got an uphill battle ahead of her; because the agency owner refuses to change anything, Laurel can't introduce computers or even an orange filing cabinet. With a bad relationship behind her (boyfriend Jason slept with best friend Steph), Lauren has sworn off dating herself. But she soon finds herself attracted to client Gabriel. But then Steph turns up on the agency's books and gets set up with Gabriel.
6/10
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Love Potions - Christina Jones (2006)
Things start going amiss in Bagley-cum-Russet when beauty therapist Sukie Ambrose finds a naked man in her bed and discovers her aromatherapy oils are jetting off on someone else's honeymoon. So she ignores the warnings of a village old-timer and uses the plants in her cottage garden to supply her massage oils. Suddenly her clients start falling in love with the most unlikely characters. But should Sukie use the potions in her own love spell or should she leave her flatmate's boyfriend well alone?
5/10
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Lucy Blue, Where Are You? - Louise Harwood (2005)
Lucy Blue is not the sort of girl to pick up a handsome stranger at a snow-bound airport and she's certainly not the sort to leap into bed with him at a motorway motel . . . but this is a special day and in any case they'll never meet again. But after Lucy and Jude part after the long road trip from Scotland to London, she sees signs at her local tube station, asking Lucy Blue, where are you? There was something charming about Lucy Blue and her story.
7/10
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Lucy in the Sky - Paige Toon (2007)
Lucy is heading back to Sydney for the wedding of her best friend Molly and Sam, a guy Lucy has always had a crush on. As Lucy gets on a flight from Heathrow, she's gets a text message, supposedly from another woman claiming she's slept with Lucy's boyfriend James. After an excruciatingly long flight, James' excuses just don't add up - after all he's a lawyer who has a habit of stretching the truth. Enjoying herself back in her hometown, Lucy finds herself drawn to Sam's younger brother, Nathan, a laidback surfer. A first-class read with lots of humour.
7/10
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Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married - Marian Keyes (1997)
Lucy and some of her friends visit a fortune teller and the tarot cards tell her that she is getting married. Without an eligible man in sight, Lucy writes it off until other predictions made about her friends start coming true.
7/10