Queen of Babble

DID NOT FINISH - ZERO stars

The one thing I cannot stand is a female character that is so immature and clueless as to be just too stupid to live. I quit on page 44 …. 43½ pages longer than I should have read, but I was determined to give it a fair shot. After all, Cabot does start with a quotation from William Shakespeare … promising. But then she begins the novel this way:
I can’t believe this. I can’t believe I don’t remember what he looks like! How can I not remember what he looks like? I mean, his tongue has been in my mouth. How could I forget what someone whose tongue has been in my mouth looks like?

It’s torture just to type it for a quote!

The thing that really gets me about books like this, and characters like Lizzie show more Nichols, is that there are legions of girls and young women reading these kind of books and thinking this is cute, sexy, endearing behavior. It isn’t. They should read Anne of Green Gables or Little Women instead. show less

I have decided to stop pretending and admit to the world that I LOVE MEG CABOT. I know they're trashy but they're fun, and she's just about the only author of this type that I like. Her writing isn't annoying or overdone or to explanatory or anything. At times it's too verbal or too simple but it fits for the genre. QoB are my favorite Meg Cabot books so far. Can't wait for the third one!

Lizzie Nichols is a blabber-mouth. But that's not her biggest problem. If I was her, I'd be more focused on the fact that I was a self-absorbed, boyfriend-stealing, shallow, mindless, sorry excuse for a woman. After meeting a guy for 24 hours, this idiot declares that she's in love with him AND THEN proceeds to move in with him, to another country of course, after only "knowing" him for three months. I put quotations around knowing because after the initial 24 hours, the contact she had with this guy was only through e-mail. The fact that she leaves a mere day after she has arrived because the guy isn't what he seemed to be (you mean in the oh, I don't know, 24 hours you've actually had a real conversation with him? Color me shocked.) show more is neither here nor there because she then continues to be an idiot throughout the entire summer.

Case in point. Another mere 24 hours after leaving the love of her life, she then falls in love with another guy after, you got it, knowing him for 24 hours. She just lurves him. And that's all she thinks about. This chick is pathetic. All she bitches about is a guy. All the time. The guy might be moving to Paris and she thinks "Oh that's a whole ocean away from me". Dude, you've known him for two days, did you really envision this grand "I will love you forever" scenario? Then she complains about the guy's girlfriend being mean to her, saying "I don't know what I ever did to her?" Well, gee, I don't know, maybe you've been blabbing everything she told you out to people she wouldn't want you to or maybe it's the fact that you've been FLIRTING with her BOYFRIEND in a not-so-subtle way. Hell, if it was me, I wouldn't have been manipulative, I would've pounded Lizzie Nichols into the ground (pathetic chicks tend to bring out violent tendencies in me with the whole "backtracking the feminist movement about fifty years" thing). Seriously, this chick was like Bella with a better fashion sense.

And another thing, the whole blabbermouth thing is not cute. In the slightest. Sure, on some people it's endearing (five year olds, honest-to-God-good-bitchy people), but on Lizzie Nichols it wasn't. It just made her sound like an idiot. One who can't keep a secret for the life of her. She was also nosy. She needed to mind her own damn business more than half the time. Annoying.

The only reason I gave Queen of Babble two stars instead of one is because I really liked the supporting characters. Shari was actually smart (which means Meg Cabot can write a smart female, but chose not to in regards to Lizzie, which is baffling) and Chaz was just adorable. I also really liked Agnes. So, two stars for great supporting characters and for being a quick page-turner. Too bad the main character was annoying and a disgrace to strong women everywhere (I call her Bella-lite). show less

I have mixed feelings on this series as a whole. It starts off weak, but it starts to pick up towards the end by throwing a few different surprises. Which…really, a book series shouldn’t work that way. It should start strong and try to end strong.

My biggest problem with Queen of Babble as a whole is that its bland. Generic characters, generic situations. Reading it feels like eating out at an Applebee’s—the food is good, but you’ve had it before and there’s nothing that really wows you. I will give Lizzie a point for actually being passionate about something—restoring vintage clothing—and having it play a huge role in the series. Otherwise, she’s a by-the-numbers chick lit heroine whose main goal is to get married and show more pop out several kids. (But not right away!) The fact that Luke is considerably well-off does not help, either. I’m really not a fan of the Cinderella concept in a lot of chick lit, wherein the love interest is financially well-off, or a big businessman or what have you. I’d like to see something where it’s two normal people falling in love and the money doesn’t play a huge role in either character’s aspirations.

Luke’s “evil” girlfriend, Dominque, is another huge sticking point. She comes off as so obviously money-hungry that the only reason that she and Luke were ever together is because of her augmentation. And tangent, I’m not a fan of vapid cosmetic surgery, but can we please stop using that to label other women as bad? This is a huge problem that shows up in a lot of Meg Cabot’s books (I had a big problem with this in one of the Boy novels)—once you get down to the motives of the “bad” girls and the heroines, they’re pretty much interchangeable. We should be able to root for the heroine because she’s likeable, not because she’s plain or reads tabloid magazines or isn’t afraid to pig out once in a while (and then berate herself for twenty pages after that).

Finally, the book takes place in London and the south of France, but it never feels like it. I can understand not seeing London in a larger role, as it’s only important to the first fifty pages, but the Mirac scenes are a let-down. There’s a large description of the house, but it never feels like “Hey! We’re all in France!” It’s like the book was set in a large country house staffed with Francophiles. Even the short trip to Sarlaut is lacking in description. Not only is setting a major part of any book, but especially if it’s supposed to be a travelogue. And when I can’t feel like I’m in the south of France with the characters, then the author is really failing.

There are parts of the book I like. I like the main characters for the most part. There’s some funny moments. I like aspects of Lizzie’s character, particularly how she’s not ashamed to sleep with her boyfriend and have quickies at various times of the day. But the bland and the repetition of so many chick lit tropes overshadow the plot that I really can’t ignore it. I like it, and at the same time, I want more from the writing. show less

I think this is my biggest guilty pleasure book. I spent the day rereading it because I have been sick for like a week and I'm all out of new books but I go cray cray if I just spend the day watching TV so I need reading breaks, and anyway, it's like the third time I've read and I'm not gonna pretend it's a great book or anything (maybe not even a good book), but I still like it a lot.

Though I had forgotten how fatphobic and misogynistic it is. Oh well ...

I love Cabot and thought 'Queen of Babble' was okay, though I certainly don't feel like it's her strongest work. While I enjoyed the traipsing through Europe and the light love story, I lacked a connection with Lizzie. Even though I felt like I really should understand where's she coming from . . . I just didn't. I didn't feel anything at all about her story . . . and really just finished it to have it finished.

Meg Cabot's "Queen of Babble" is further proof I'm getting more crotchety in my old age. I know I loved this book the first time I read it, but this time around I found the narrator Lizzie's fashion obsession a little grating.

I think my library must be sick of my interlibrary loans and is throttling me-- I only get one book at a time these days. So, I decided to pull something off my shelves to fill the gap... it was between this and Slavomir Rawicz's "The Long Walk." I went with frothy and bubbly instead of gritty and sad. I probably should have gone with Rawicz instead.

I don't know if knowing how the rest of the series turned out hindered my enjoyment of this one or whether I'm finally getting to an age where I've outgrown young show more adult fiction. Don't get me wrong, Meg Cabot is good at what she does.... I just didn't enjoy this quick read as much as I expected. show less