Unfortunately, the Meg Cabot’s Queen of Babble had some king-sized problems.
Queen of Babble follows Lizzie Nichols, a recent college graduate with a big mouth, who travels to London for the summer to spend time with her boyfriend. However, plans her plans do not go as expected. Soon, Lizzie finds herself at a chateau in France with her friends to help with a wedding. There she meets Luke, the chateau owner’s son, and finds herself falling for him.
Since high school, I always loved Meg Cabot books. Most of the books I checked out between freshman and senior year were either Meg Cabot or Sarah Dessen. I loved how Meg Cabot’s colorful and fun writing stood apart from other books. I’m disappointed to say, however, that I did not really enjoy Queen of Babble.
One of my main issues with this book was the main character, Lizzie. After recently graduating college, potentially moving to New York, and spending the summer in London, I expected Lizzie to act a little more mature. However, Lizzie’s voice actually reminded me of a character from a younger YA book. After a brief encounter with her boyfriend, she planned their entire lives together. She built him up to be this wonderful guy after meeting him one time, despite warnings from her friends. After awhile, her character really irritated to me.
Another issue I had with Queen of Babble was the pacing. If you want to read this book, do not read the summary from Goodreads because description is the entire book. When I was reading, I was surprised that I was already around 40% through the book and Luke still didn’t appear in the book. Furthermore, a lot of the book repeated what happened in earlier parts of the book just to different characters. Even though Lizzie is the “queen of babbling,” sometimes it became a little too much. I found myself skipping paragraphs where she repeated the same information over and over.
As a result, the romance part of the book suffered. Lizzie doesn’t meet Luke until far into the book, which means there is little time to see their relationship develop. Especially since Luke has a girlfriend when Lizzie arrives, readers are only given a few cute moments between the characters. Even though this book is very chicklit, I expected a little more out of their relationship.
Overall, Queen of Babble was okay, but not my favorite Meg Cabot book. Since it took awhile for me to become interested in the story and I wasn’t the biggest fan of the main character, I give this book two out of five stars.
Beauty and the Bean Boots 