DREAMING IN BLACK AND WHITE by Laura Jensen Walker

Captain’s Log, Stardate 04.12.2005

"Dreaming in Black and White" by Laura Jensen Walker

From the back cover:

Phoebe Grant is everyone’s favorite movie geek--unbeatable at trivia, convinced that all the world’s a movie screen. She can organize a four-hankie chick-flickathon with a wave of her tall, nonfat, double mocha. And she’s a shoo-in for the job of her dreams--movie reviewer for the newspaper where she works.

Enter Alex Spencer--not only gorgeous but also a film buff, perfectly cast for a celluloid kiss and a fade to sunset. Unfortunately, Alex is the villain who sends Phoebe packing to the last place on earth she wants to be--back home to boring little Barley, California.

But wait. It couldn’t be. Dark, handsome, and annoying Alex . . . in Barley?

Can Phoebe protect her hometown--and her heart--and prove It’s a Wonderful Life? Or is her promising future truly Gone With the Wind?

Camy here:

Fabulous! Hilarious writing--dialogue, scenes, characters--I was laughing my tail off. The humor is truly witty, versus sarcastic put-downs.

The characters are genuine people I cared about and related to. Phoebe Grant is more like "everygirl” with her obsessions and outlook on life. Phoebe struggles with her single status and nagging relatives just like Bridget Jones, but with less emphasis on sex as the basis for attraction and more on the personality differences.

Readers who have attended Christian Singles’ groups at their own churches will find Phoebe’s group both funny and frighteningly familiar. The characters are not over-the-top, but they stand out as caricatures of anyone’s real life friends.

The movie trivia peppered in the prose makes things interesting. I had seen some of the movies mentioned, although not all of them, but it didn’t matter because the references are always explained and I felt as hip as matinee-hopping Phoebe. It made me put those old movies on my Netflix queue. Haha.

This was fabulous entertainment from page one to the end. I wouldn’t hesitate to hand it to any high school girl because it’s good, clean fun, although the fears about getting older and being single might go over the heads of young women who are nowhere near the 3-0 mark. I found this on par with Kristin Billerbeck’s Ashley Stockingdale series, but with a very different sort of heroine who is nevertheless equally endearing.

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