Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Five: Smart Girls Like Me

Smart Girls Like Me, by Diane Vadino, is a novel about a 24-year-old woman living in New York City in 1999, and it was really a great follow-up to The Defining Decade.  The protagonist is half-convinced the world will end with the year 2000, way more upset than she wants to admit that her best friend is going to be married in a few months, and doesn't really know what she wants and how to get it.  Her dating life is miserable--until a cute co-worker at the job she hates but is too wimpy to quit comes back from China and sweeps her off her feet.  (This was the least realistic part of the book, in my opinion.)  As her first serious relationship progresses, the millennium and her best friend's wedding approach, and her job continues to suck, our intrepid protagonist finally starts to figure some things out about who she wants to be, and while this book is sort of depressing, its end is cautiously hopeful.  It's a quick beach type read, good for a warm summer's day.