There are some authors out there who get lots of buzz, but perhaps not for one specific book. As I looked at my giant stack(s) of TBR, Kristan Higgins immediately came to mind. I had a few of her books that I’d picked up at RWA over the years, but I’d never actually read them. However, I have heard everyone and their dog praise her to the skies. So I pulled out her 2009 release, Too Good To Be True, and made a very happy discovery. I haven’t had a book make me laugh so much in ages!

I’ll admit that I initially had a hard time with the set-up. Grace Emerson, a passionate high school history teacher who is waaay too nice for her own good, lives alone in the house that she and her fiance were to have owned as newlyweds. So, how did this come about? Well, the feckless fiance broke up with Grace after falling head over heels in love with her younger sister.

Grace’s reaction to all this is interesting. On the one hand, she adores her younger sister completely even though she’s very hurt by what happened. However, she’s also lonely and the horrified pity she endures from extended family seems to bother her almost as much as the actual breakup. So, she does what any normal person would do (or maybe not.)

She invents a perfect, imaginary boyfriend who happens to be a handsome pediatric surgeon. It seems Grace has a track record of inventing these imaginary guys in her life and in this case, the discussions of the imaginary boyfriend really are funny. So, what’s the problem? Well, after a disastrous first meeting, Grace and her new neighbor Callahan O’Shea start to develop some very interesting chemistry between them.

So, what is wonderful in this book? Plenty of things. First of all, I loved the dialogue. The author does a good job of conveying emotion in ways that make her characters very relatable – and also very funny. Some of Grace and Callahan’s conversations had me chuckling as I read, and they were great fun. I also liked that Grace and Callahan both seemed like real people rather than placeholders. Callahan has some secrets in his past that are different from the usual, and which pose a real challenge for him and Grace. He’s also a genuinely decent guy, but thankfully far from bland. I enjoyed Grace’s love of history and teaching, and I thought it was fun that Higgins made her a Civil War reenactor.

Higgins writes in the first person from Grace’s perspective, so even though this book is strongly romantic, it also has a bit of a chick lit feel. I found this particularly true when we deal with Grace’s family life. In addition to her time with Callahan, we also get to explore Grace’s relationships with her parents, her acid-tongued grandmother, and her sisters. The relationship between the sisters captured my interest the most, though I did find it uncomfortable as a reader. Grace is a middle child, and she’s so close to her younger sister that the two seem to exist almost in their own private realm – to the exclusion of her older sister Margaret. Since the characters are obviously aware of this dynamic, I found myself feeling quite sorry for Margaret and sometimes a bit angry at Grace for treating her sister so poorly. And even though we do get a plausible explanation for why Grace is so forgiving of the fiance-stealing sister, it came a little late for me.

Even so, this book is laugh out loud funny, and I mostly enjoyed myself immensely while reading it. I’d give it a strong B.