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

Lizzie Nichols has a problem - she can’t help spilling secrets. When she decides to spend the summer in London with her boyfriend, she accidentally gets him trouble with her big mouth and they break up. She ends up spending the summer in the South of France, working with her best friend catering weddings at a chateau.

This was a fun, lighthearted piece of chick-lit. Even though Lizzie doesn’t always make the best decisions, she’s funny and likable and I was rooting for her all the way through the book. Sometimes in these types of books the clueless heroine stresses me out so much that I can’t enjoy the story (e.g. the Shopaholic books) but that was not true in this case.

I listened to the audio version of this book. It’s show more narrated by Justine Eyre who also narrated Cabot’s Heather Wells mystery series. She does a great job with all the required accents – American, English and French. show less

Lizzie Nichols is about to have the best summer of her life. She has graduated from college (the first in her family to do so) and will spend a month in London visiting Andrew, her boyfriend. Unfortunately things do not go as planned.

Lizzie discovers she hasn't graduated after all. As part of her independent study, she is to write a thesis—a requirement she claims to know nothing about. Her topic is the history of fashion and it has to be at least fifty pages. The problem is in two days she's traveling to London to visit her boyfriend.

Her trip to London quickly turns into disaster. Andrew isn't the same as she remembers in college. When Lizzie discovers the truth about him, it sends her scrambling to her best friend, Shari who, along show more with her boyfriend Chaz, is spending the summer in France. Chaz is friends with Luke, whose father owns the chateau that he is working at with Shari. Their job is to assist with the wedding details of Luke's cousin.

While on the train traveling to Souillac to meet Shari, Lizzie meets a gorgeous stranger: an American man! Before she knows it, she's telling him everything about not graduating to her breakup with Andrew. Little does she know that this stranger will become a significant part of her life.

Queen of Babble has been sitting on my shelf unread for awhile now. I adore Meg Cabot and have read nearly half of her collection. At one time, Queen of Babble was on my "must read" list along with the other two books in the series. I wish I could say it was worth the wait. Sadly, it wasn't.

Early on, I thought Cabot was repetitive with Lizzie's thoughts that it took away from the story. And yes, Queen of Babble is quite predictable. The moment she meets this "stranger", the reader knows who he is and can quickly see where the story is headed. The formula of "girl dates boy only to find out he's not the one for her and then finds her true love" didn't work for me in this novel. Even though the story fell a bit flat for me, I still want to continue with the trilogy. I am curious to know what Lizzie gets herself into while living in New York City. show less

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

So this is the second Meg Cabot chick lit book I've read that whisked me away. Her writing just takes you to different places and brings this great adventure. In this novel, Lizzie travels to England and then France... and she does it as a great risk... and she jumps right into the adventure that makes me kind of jealous. Of course, I wouldn't be doing that anytime soon... at least not till I finish university myself. And I'll be sure to finish my thesis paper before thinking I've graduated and left the country.
In a way, this book reminded me of the Confessions of a Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella. In that... the heroines in both love fashion (but one is about the latest trends, the other vintage), have trouble controlling show more themselves (one shopping, the other babble-ing) and attract rich and hot guys. So, basically, if you're a fan of Meg Cabot or the Shopaholic series, I think you'll like this book as well. show less

Lizzie Nichols has finally graduated from college and can't wait to join her new boyfriend in London. She only met him one night before he returned to London, but his letters are so sweet and sexy. When she arrives, however, she discovers Andrew is neither sweet nor sexy and is involved in a scheme to defraud the governent. Fortunately, Lizzie's best friend, Shari, is spending the summer in a French villa with HER boyfriend and invites Lizzie to come and stay with them. This turns out to be a perfect arrangement, especailly after she meets Jean-Luc, so of the owner of the villa. But, as usual, things take a turn for the worse...because Lizzie can't seem to keep her mouth shut.

A typical Meg Cabot book...funny, quirky, and romantic. A show more light, fun read. 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