Archive for July 13th, 2010

Chick Flick Tuesday highlights the best chick flicks in the movie world as well as bringing you news on upcoming chick flick releases as well as letting you all know about which chick lit books are being made into chick flick movies!

This week, I’ve been reading Michelle Jackson’s novel One Kiss in Havana and it’s really made me think of one movie in particular, and that’s Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights. It’s a prequel (well, meant to be) to the original Dirty Dancing movie starring Patrick Swayze, but this one is set in Cuba, and follows Katy Miller’s move there from America and her adjusting to her new lifestyle. There is some great music (I bought the soundtrack after watching it!) and the dancing is brilliant too so for me it’s a must-see summer movie!

Arriving in Cuba just before the revolution breaks out, 18 year old Katey Miller meets a local boy who instantly notices her dancing abilities and pursues her. Her strict parents immediately disapprove of the relationship, forcing the pair to meet in secret at a Havana nightclub. The pair practice their dance steps in preparation for the prestigious national dance competition. But with Castro’s ascent to power, Americans are being forced to leave the country. Will Katy be able to stay, even if she wants to?

A couple of weeks ago I got the chance to interview the lovely Abby McDonald and with her latest adult novel, The Liberation of Alice Love, hitting the shelves last week, now is the perfect time for you to read it! I absolutely loved the book, and we’ll be reviewing it tomorrow, and the interview is just as great! Enjoy.

1. Tell us about your latest book The Liberation of Alice Love.

I’m tempted to just paste in my back cover blurb, but I’ll be good The book is about an organised, go-to girl, Alice, who is shocked to find herself the victim of identity theft: someone has drained her savings, maxed out credit cards, and taken out loans totalling almost 100,000 pounds! With the help of a rather dashing investigator, Nathan, Alice struggles to untangle the wreckage, but when she discovers that the thief is closer to home than she ever imagined, she becomes obsessed with tracking them down…. only to wonder if the glamorous, adventurous life being lived in her name isn’t one she wants for herself.

2. The plot of The Liberation of Alice Love is fairly complex, where did the idea come from for Alice to have her identity stolen? Has anything of the sort ever happened to you?

No! Luckily, I’ve never had a problem with identity theft myself - except the usual debit card fraud attempts. Identity theft is a step beyond that: where someone actually impersonates you, using fake or real ID, and signing up to all sorts of things in your name. I did a lot of research, to make sure the plot was possible, and all the experts I talked to gave me these long lists of simple ‘how-to’s that were quite terrifying! It’s incredible how easy it is, and how we don’t even think that somebody will try.

The idea for the book actually began when a friend forwarded me an article about a pair of American identity thieves. They were in college, and actually pretty inept (they stole from friends, under their own names, and posted photos of their glamorous adventures on facebook!) but it planted the seeds of identity theft as something relevant to people in their 20s/30s. I’d heard about it before, but it always seemed more abstract: computer hacking, and things like that. But what if it was somebody you knew impersonating you? And, for that matter, how well can we really know anyone we meet - even people we think are our friends?

All my books touch on the concept of identity, so this was a great chance to delve deeper. Another big part of the book is trust, and lying, and the different versions of ourselves we present in life. We all talk about ‘reinvention’, with makeovers and shopping, but what if that temptation to escape the past drove us even further - to take on new names, and even new lives? Alice starts out not even comprehending how somebody could do this to her, but throughout the book, she begins to see the appeal of creating herself from scratch.

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I really enjoyed Sharon Owen’s last book The Seven Secrets of Happiness so I was thrilled to see she would be having a new title out in November 2010 called A Winter’s Wedding. There’s no cover yet, but I expect it’ll be just as pretty as The Seven Secrets of Happiness cover! Here’s the synopsis:

For thirty-year-old Emily this winter seems particularly long and miserable. This time last year she was due to marry Alex in her dream fairytale wedding but her dream turned to a nightmare when Alex left her alone – jilted at the altar.

A year on, she’s still licking her wounds. There’ve been a flurry of Christmas parties but she hasn’t been inclined to look for that special someone under the mistletoe. So when Emily meets scruffy, sexy Dylan she’s very resistant to the idea of a new relationship.

But Dylan is nothing if not determined and sets about thawing Emily’s frozen heart. But just as Emily abandons herself to all the loveliness of a new relationship, ghosts from her past appear from nowhere and threaten to derail it. Can Emily ever let go of her doomed winter wedding and allow herself to love again?