32AA, by Michelle Cunnah

I'm fast becoming a chick-lit convert. I had a lot of fun with 32AA (extras), by Michelle Cunnah.

The Emma Taylor theory about men:

The Ionic Bonder: charms you, (i.e. makes you fall in love with him), dispels his extra electron (i.e., has sex with you), then ruthlessly dumps you.

The Noble Gas: does not bond with anyone.

The Covalent Bonder: permanently bonds with you (i.e., falls in love with you) and totally completes your outer electron field. The perfect man!

On her thirtieth birthday Emma Taylor expects (a) an engagement ring from Adam, her wonderful live-in boyfriend, and (b) a promotion at work.

But when Ionic Bonder Adam ditches her for his older, full-breasted mistress (good-bye Tiffany ring and Manhattan loft!), and the jerk at work steals her promotion, Emma swears off men for ever...until she meets Jack, the classic Ionic Bonder. Or is he?

I had a blast reading 32AA. I zipped right through it in one sitting, laughed, almost cried, and finished it with a smile on my face. And immediately gave it to my sister :-) My grade: a B+.

I just loved Emma. She's smart and fun and a genuinely nice person, without being a pushover. I liked that she had quite a bit of bitchiness in her, and the way she got her revenge on that pig Adam was great.... a reasonable type of revenge, not going into crazy stalker territory, but not letting him walk scott-free, either. I think the best was at work, simply because it was so smart of her. She drove the guy nuts, all while not giving him any reason to complain about her behaviour.

And I adored her group of friends. They were *good* friends, supportive and always there, and Emma was a good friend to them. I liked that each of them had kind of their little story in the book, a kind of mini subplot (even their own romance, in the case of her two single friends), which made them even more interesting. I thought it was great how Cunnah was able to balance the space devoted to them and to Emma's story. The friends' subplots were just long enough. I think my favourite was brilliant Rachel, with her bitchy attitude and potty mouth.

The weakest part of the book was actually the romance. There's just not enough interaction between Emma and her love interest (I won't name him, as this development comes quite late, but don't read the back cover blurb if you don't want to get spoiled). He seems to be a nice guy, and does some very nice things, but this was somewhat offset by the fact that he was very much a slut, which is quite a bit of a turn-off to me.

Has anyone read the sequel, Call Waiting? For some reason, as much as I adored 32AA, I'm not in any particular hurry to go buy the other book.