Just for Fun in the Sun

It’s vacation time, so top that stack of self-improvement books with some titles that are just for fun. And to help you get to some perfect spots for R&R and easy summer reading, check out National Geographic’s 50 Best Girlfriends Getaways in North America. Expert traveler Marybeth Bond not only dishes all the facts and inspiration you’ll need to plan girlfriend getaways for every purpose and occasion (from healing when you’ve been dumped to retail therapy in small artsy towns). She also serves healthy doses of advice and practical tips, along with stories that shed light on this ever-so-popular phenomenon.
http://shop.nationalgeographic.com

A perfect diversion for a long flight or a lazy day by the pool is Frenemies, a new novel by Megan Crane, author of Everyone Else’s Girl and English as a Second Language. I was prepared to dismiss this as just another purging of twenty-something angst or emptiness, but the author’s sharp wit and sly humor proved irresistible. Frenemies unfolds like a story told by one girlfriend to another in the voice of “Gus” Curtis, “a single female on the verge of thirty,” who’s forced to dangle her toe into the waters of adulthood when an old college friend not only steals her boyfriend but also does so without a hint of shame or regret. With a gift for creating characters with enough “everywoman” qualities to make them realistic and enough quirkiness to keep them interesting, Crane reveals the sometimes tenuous, but more often ironclad bonds, of friendship through sharp dialogue that drips with irony. Her pop-culture references and breezy, confessional style make hers a world that’s utterly familiar, peopled by characters you’ll swear you know.

A gifted writer, Crane reveals the many faces of friendship, including the two-face, the poker-face, and the about-face. She cleverly constructs a house of cards, then blows hard to see just how much wind it can withstand. It’s froth—but very tasty froth.
www.5-spot.com

—KJ