Queen of Babble in the Big City

The Princess Diaries Author Meg Cabot's New Chick Lit Novel

Aug 3, 2007

Lizzie Nichols returns with a new series of adventures in love and life in New York City.

Meg Cabot’s Queen of Babble in the Big City picks up where her previous novel, Queen of Babble, leaves off. Lizzie Nichols is back from her trip to France, and is pounding the pavement of New York City, in search of an apartment and a job. When she and her best friend and former college roommate Shari have trouble finding an affordable apartment, she accepts Luke’s offer to live with him in his mother’s Fifth-avenue apartment, leaving Shari to move into her boyfriend Chaz’s apartment with him in a questionable neighborhood.

Shari soon lands her dream job, but Lizzie struggles with the high price of Manhattan living and ends up accepting a part-time receptionist job that Chaz sets up for her at his father’s posh law firm. Soon thereafter, Lizzie lands an unpaid internship at a bridal gown restoration shop and more than makes up for in experience what she did not get in salary.

It’s not long before Lizzie’s big mouth gets her in trouble once again. She befriends Jill Higgins, a client at the law firm where she works and bride to be – and is promptly fired from her job because it breaks the company’s confidentiality policy. Jill is marrying into a prominent Manhattan family and being made to wear a size six family wedding gown on her size twelve body. Lizzie works her magic on the gown, and before she knows it, all the brides of Manhattan want Lizzie to design their gowns.

Things aren't going so well at home for Lizzie, though. Between her two jobs and Luke’s medical school classes, they find that even with living together they barely spend any time together. When they do, Shari points out, Lizzie just goes along with what Luke wants to do rather than just being herself, as part of her new policy of trying to keep her mouth shut. When Luke mentions that he has a Christmas gift for Lizzie’s future, she swoons, immediately thinking an engagement room is in her future, despite Shari and Chaz’s frequent mention that he isn’t the marriage type. But when Luke presents Lizzie with a new sewing machine on Christmas (to replace her old one, which his father broke) she realizes that she isn’t in love with him after all and moves into the vacant apartment above the bridal shop.

The plot is predictable and the characters underdeveloped, but for readers who are looking for an easy summer read, Queen of Babble delivers. Cabot’s writing is engaging and funny, and the novel is a quick read, albeit not a memorable one.

The copyright of the article Queen of Babble in the Big City in Chick Lit is owned by Teresa Shaw. Permission to republish Queen of Babble in the Big City in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.