Heather Wells rocks!

Size 12 And Ready to Rock (Heather Wells Mysteries #4) by Meg Cabot (William Morrow trade paperback).

It's summer seen at the fictional New York College, so most of the students are gone. But assistant residence hall director (and former teen singing sensation) Heather Wells is still on the job.
Her old nemesis Tania Trace has decided to hold her first Teen Rock Camp, and due to security concerns, has chosen Fischer Hall as its location. Heather's not thrilled at the idea of having dozens of chattering 13- and 14-year olds running around, but at least Tania has hired Heather's fiancé (!), private detective Cooper Cartwright as her bodyguard.

Somehow this also involves Heather reconnecting with Cooper's family. Cooper's dad is Heather's former manager and his brother Jordan is her former boyfriend (and Tania's current husband).
Things become even more complicated when The producer of the JORDAN LOVES TANIA reality television show is killed by a poisoned cupcake left for
Tania by an adoring fan.

Since this happened on her turf, Heather takes this very personally and sets out to determine the identity of the poisoner.

Heather Wells, despite the fact that she's a former pop star, is Everygirl. She struggles to make ends meet (thanks to her embezzling parents) and has weight issues. Prolific and talented author Cabot has created another protagonist readers really care about.

If you like humorous mysteries and haven't discovered Heather Wells yet, go pick up Size 12 is Not Fat (you could start with this book, but you'll enjoy it so much more if you start with the first book in the series). You can thank me later.



FTC Full Disclosure: Many thanks to the publisher, who sent me a copy of the book for review purposes.

Teen Tuesday

Insatiable by Meg Cabot*

Although this series was intended for adults, I think it's equally (or maybe even  more) appropriate for the young adult market.

Insatiable introduces us to Meena Harper, a young woman who writes for a popular daytime drama called Insatiable, and has the annoying ability to predict how people will die.  Meena doesn'tbelieve in vampires, and is self-righteously miffed when she's informed that the soap opera will be introducing  a story arc featuring one.

Then, she meets Lucien Antonescu, who just happens to be the son of Dracula.  He saves her from certain injury due to an attack by evil bats.  She falls head-over-heels in love with him, and they begin to develop a relationship.

Of course, at first Meena doesn't believe that Lucien is a supernatural being, but eventually she begins to realize that vampires are much more common than she could possibly imagine.  She even has neighbors who are vampires, for heaven's sake!

The story is written in a charming tongue-in-cheek style, and is obviously Ms. Cabot's response to recent proliferation of intense paranormal romantic fiction.  Cabot does have stray from the facetious tone on occasion, but  on the whole, this is an enjoyable, laugh-out-loud interpretation of the genre.

The reviewer with Meg Cabot, earlier this year.

Meg Cabot is the author of many books for adults, teens, and younger readers including the Heather Wells mysteries, the Princess Diaries series, and the Allie Finkle series.  She also wrote the Mediator and the 1-800-Where-R-You young adult series under the pseudonym Jenny Carroll.

FTC full disclosure: This was a library book.*