Cathy Lamb's very best literary friends...plus a book giveaway

One of the options we gave authors for "Friendship Month" was to share which Chick Lit characters would be their best friends. Cathy Lamb took us up on that challenge. Her latest novel has a fitting title for this month, as it is called My Very Best Friend. We've been hearing rave reviews for this book and are excited to feature Cathy today and share a copy with one lucky reader anywhere in the world, thanks to Kensington.

Cathy Lamb lives in Oregon. She spends a lot of time daydreaming. She has a wild imagination. Cathy is a bad skier and does not like to clean the house. Her husband says she “cooks by fire alarm.” As in, when the fire alarm goes off, that’s when she remembers to take the dinner out of the oven. She is working on her tenth novel. Her previous novels include: What I Remember Most, A Different Kind Of Normal, Such A Pretty Face, and The Last Time I Was Me. Visit Cathy at her website, Facebook, and Twitter.

A short and sweet synopsis of My Very Best Friend:
An old stone cottage in Scotland.
An overgrown garden. A man in a kilt.
Lingerie bike riding at midnight. Tea and crumpets.
Two best friends.
One is missing.

Who are the top five Chick Lit characters I’d want to be friends with? Well now. That’s not so hard to choose.

As a writer who spends a lot of time alone, fiddling around with my daydreams, talking in my head to characters as if they are real people, who eats too much chocolate and drinks too much coffee, I would have to say…

1. Sally and Gillian Owens of Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman.
 I love magic. I grew up on the Narnia stories and Practical Magic was an excellent adult extension without the lion and the talking beavers. If I hung out with Sally and Gillian and their aunts long enough maybe I could learn some spells and curses. It’s what I really need in my life: A tad bit of magic.

2. Cannie Shapiro of Good In Bed by Jennifer Weiner.
Cannie had a lot of wisdom. She’s the type of best friend you could stay up with all night and eat popcorn and watch funny movies and share all your secrets, and she would share hers, and then if you didn’t see each other for ten years, you could have another night of popcorn/secret sharing and you would still be best friends and everything would feel exactly the same in the relationship and no one would have spilled the other’s secrets even if a dragon was threatening to breathe fire upon you unless you told.

3. Kate Reddy of I Don’t Know How She Does it by Allison Pearson.
As a mother of three who works full time and has for years, I related to Kate. I laughed out loud at her complicated and semi – desperate thought processes – how to manage work and home and housework and kids and a husband, all at once - because I’ve had them so often myself. And that scene when she’s standing in front of a bunch of egotistical men at a meeting and doesn’t realize that her blouse is see through and her bra is red? Hilarious.

4. Bridget Jones of Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding. Who could pass up the late night dinners and city lights, the fast and furious conversations with her friends, the laughter, the craziness, the edge, the honesty? The granny panties? My life in suburbia could use a lift and some excitement. And I’ll take Colin Firth, too. Duh. Of course I’d take Colin Firth.

5. Andrea Sachs of The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger.
 I would want to be friends with Andrea before she left Vogue. I mean, well, not Vogue. The name Vogue is not in the book, but we all know that little secret is out of the bag. Anyhow, I would want to go to work with Andrea for one week and see how a magazine is put together. I’d want to learn about fashion and style because I know zero about it. Jeans and sweaters are good enough for me, but still. So interesting! But no more than a week at work with Andrea because I couldn’t stand her boss.


Thanks to Cathy for visiting with us today and to Kensington for the book to share with our readers.

How to win: Use Rafflecopter to enter the giveaway. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. If you have trouble using Rafflecopter on our blog, enter the giveaway here.


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Worldwide. Giveaway ends September 15th at midnight EST.