Julia Holden (1) (1959–)

This book totally surprised me. I was going through some books I had with places in the title and there were two I hadn't read that interested me. I needed something to read in the evening, but not put me to sleep. Both of the books were nonfiction, which my brain wasn't feeling up to nonfiction (undoubtedly due to the wine I'd had earlier in the evening) so I dug a little further into the pile. The blurb on the back sounded amusing so I thought I'd give it a try. To my complete surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

More of a modern day Ugly Duckling than chick lit, the story follows Linda Stone, a bad waitress with bad attitude, as she follows the trail of a feather and a photograph to learn about her long dead mother. The process takes her from Somerville MA, to Las Vegas and Paris. That the journey involves some hard truths, interesting characters, explorations of art, self-discovery and a lot of humor made it a delightful book to read.… (meer)

The Dangerous Dress of the title is a dress Jane inherits from her grandmother. Found in an old suitcase with a menu from Le Tour D'Argent it's surrounded by mystery until Jane sees a copy of it in a class on fashion in college. She bases an essay on the dress and the essay is submitted to a competition.

When the dress is considered perfect for a film shoot in Paris, Jane finds herself whisked off to Paris so that they can use it and finds herself having a lot of adventures a million miles away from Kirland.

It's a fun piece of chick-lit with some far-fetched adventure, but who hasn't wished that they could be whisked off to Paris at a moment's notice and treated like a star?… (meer)