Chick Lit

Chick Lit is the literary equivalent of the Chick Flick, referring to books written explicitly for an adult female readership, and meant to appeal to their (presumed) tastes. Rather than referring to books by women or about women in general, it has contracted to represent a specific genre.

The heroines are usually young, attractive professional women, and the book will often focus heavily on their relationships, careers, sexuality, shopping tastes and habits, fashion, and so on. The tone is usually light and humorous, possibly self-effacing.

Chick Lit is notably different from the Romance Novel in themes and tone, though there often is a romantic element. Romance publishers often have separate Chick Lit imprints.

Successful Chick Lit novels often yield multiple sequels, and several have been adapted for the big screen and/or television.


 * Avalon High
 * Audrey Wait
 * Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding.
 * The Cheetah Girls
 * The Devil Wears Prada
 * Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
 * Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is a non-fictional example.
 * Faking It
 * Girls
 * Hothouse Flower and The Nine Plants of Desire by Margot Berwin
 * A notorious example, overlapping with young adult fiction, is Kaavya Viswanathan's How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. The publisher of this initially widely-publicized and bestselling novel recalled and destroyed all unsold copies, and cancelled the author's contract for a second book, following several media exposés alleging that Viswanathan had plagiarized numerous passages from the works of McCafferty, Kinsella and Cabot.
 * In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner.
 * Lipstick Jungle
 * Love in a Nutshell
 * The Lovely Bones
 * Memoirs of a Geisha
 * My Sister's Keeper
 * The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot.
 * Sex and the City and 4 Blondes by Candace Bushnell.
 * The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
 * Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty.
 * Something Borrowed
 * Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella.
 * Stephanie Plum
 * Waiting to Exhale
 * White Oleander

Works sometimes mistaken for Chick Lit:

 * Twilight and its sequels are actually Young Adult. Although it has a large adult female Periphery Demographic, it was primarily aimed at teen/tween girls.