2 quick ones

Going Dutch by Katie Fforde

Another cosy bit of chicklit from Fforde. Dora has just left her since-school boyfriend and needs a place to stay. Her friend Karen's mom, Jo, is staying on a barge belonging to a friend because her husband has dumped her for a young, blonde floozy. They end up travelling to Holland with cute jack-of-all-things-boaty Tom and master skipper Marcus when it turns out the barge needs to go to drydock. Nothing surprising, both women end up with the guys and there's the usual Fforde-ish element of living/working in an odd place. I liked all the barge bits - it used to be my dream to live on a houseboat. Nice easy comfort-food type reading.


Guyaholic by Carolyn Mackler

I hadn't realized this was a sequel to Vegan Virgin Valentine when I picked it up. I found it a disappointing one. I remember really liking VVV and for me this just didn't do it justice. I think my main problem was that it's self-centred, badly-behaved V's sequel and I was more interested in her older cousin Mara, who's a very secondary character here. Guyaholic seems like a nice way of saying slut, though her trampy ways are supposed to be justified by V's feelings of abandonment by her mother and her mother's clinginess with men. When V finally meets a fab guy, Sam, she messes it up and ends up fleeing to her absent mother in San Antonio despite the fact that the woman has let her down her entire life. Thanks to a helpful waiter V sees the error of her ways just in the nick of time.There are some good bits (for example, she meets Sam when a hockey puck hits her in the head and knocks her into his lap) but overall this didn't really do it for me. But teens who either related to V or wondered what happened to her may enjoy it and it's a very quick read.