What is chick lit? I tend to get a little tongue-tied when answering this question because there really isn’t a clear-cut definition. Some people think chick lit is nothing more than mindless garbage filled with formulaic plotlines. But if you extensively read into the genre, you’ll see that it’s so much more than stories about vapid, Gucci-obsessed women looking for love in Manhattan. So in answer to this question, I’d say chick lit is an umbrella term for a variety of genres that appeal to women –cozy mysteries, paranormal romance, hard-boiled thrillers, inspiring memoirs, to name a few.
In response to the critics who claim the chick lit genre is dying out – they couldn’t be more wrong! Sure, books about label-loving city slickers may be losing popularity, but novels centered around strong female characters are alive and well in bookstores and on the big screen. Anyone who dares to disagree with me should go watch The Help, A Winter’s Bone, or The Secret Life of Bees. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to step off of my soapbox and go pick up the next installment of the Hunger Games trilogy.
Yours truly,
~Jessica E. Sinn, president and CEO of Chick Lit Cafe
My new mystery–Killerwatts in the Katskills–is chick lit for sure. The first in a series of I.Z. Marins Mysteries–this novel introduces a female PI who is cheeky, irreverent, and very human. Bonded with her BFF, Izzy Marins investigates her first murder in the tiny hamlet of Stamford, New York, and lives to tell her story.