Natural Born Charmer (edition 2008)

ereader ebook,headless woman cover

Chick lit but entertaining, not boring, lively chick lit than doesn't make you overdosed on the pink and fluffy. Blue is fun to watch and the reader can easily identify with the emotional journey she takes. Phillips chose to have two narrators, the girl and the boy. And I wrote girl and boy even though both characters are in their early thirty they are emotionally in their late teens. Not the next American masterpiece but good, fun chick lit that doesn't leave an aftertaste of too much sugar or purple prose. ( )

Natural Born Charmer is actually a pretty decent book, but...how shall i put it?...its eyes are bigger than its stomach. It's this light, frothy, contemporary romance between a quirky itinerant painter, Blue, and an all-star football player, Dean, with maybe a dozen sub-plots. There's Dean's relationship with his mother, Dean's relationship with his father, the relationship between Dean's mother and father, Dean and his half-sister, the half-sister and Dean's parents (individually and as a pair), Blue and the crotchety old lady who runs the town, Blue and her mother.

Some of these sub-plots are pretty heavy; when Dean was very young, for example, his mother was a drug addict who did a pretty poor job of raising him. Now she's clean and wants to make up for her poor parenting. Phillips makes an effort to keep the light, funny tone, the witty repartee, and wrap everyone's story up at the end with a neat little bow...as a result, there's no way she can give each of her sub-plots the treatment it deserves. All the subplots, and the main romance as well, suffer from being squeezed into Phillips' allotted word count.

I had one other problem with the book, which probably won't bother anyone else. We know Blue is a painter but it's not until the end that we find out how Blue paints. She gets the opportunity to let her creativity run wild and, apparently, she produces a lot of sentimental schlock. I'm sure plenty of people will be thinking, "Yes, march to the beat of your own drummer, Blue! Modern art is stupid, Blue!"...but not me. Finding out that she made silly paintings depressed me, so the book ended on a sour note for me. . ( )

This is the best SEP I've read...so far, at least. I loved it (4.5 stars) and I'm still thinking about giving it five stars. The only thing I didn't love was the Thomas Kinkade vibe I was getting from the descriptions of Blue's painting-style. ( )

Loved, loved, loved this book. The repartee is witty and the characters are charming and flawed and I loved going into their world.Dialogue is sassy and sharp and is sure to keep you on your toes. The heroine is not your glamourous beauty but she steals the heart of our hero and we want them to get it all together soooo much. I love the setting in Tennessee and the wanderlust of our heroine as she battles the fear of giving her love and accepting love after a lifetime of disappointments. We can all overcome and hope springs eternal when we read this charmer. Oh, and the hero is awesome in this book. ( )