Room for Love

Rich detail, a plot that lasts for a solid eight innings and a genuinely likable heroine give Meyer’s conventional chick lit entry sparkle. At 32, Jacquie Stuart has pals who look out for her, an East Village miniloft that she owns, a managing editor’s job at a tiny but respected film magazine and a history of falling for guys who don’t want to commit. Witnessing her sister Alicia’s and her co-worker Samantha’s real estate–based romantic successes, Jacquie pitches an article to a well-paying women’s mag proposing that pretending to apartment-hunt is the ideal way to meet men (“a guy’s home doesn’t lie”) and gets assigned the piece. After meeting a few frogs, Jacquie clicks with Anthony, a documentarian living in Williamsburg. Jacquie makes sacrifices, and old patterns soon start to emerge, leaving her with hard decisions. Elements of the denouement are convenient to say the least, but Meyer gives Jacquie some terrific foils (in friends Courtney and gay man Jeremy), and has poignant things to say about the struggle to find the right person. (Sept.)