Consider Lily
Anne Dayton and May Vanderbilt
WaterBrook, Jun 2006, $11.95
ISBN: 1400072565

In San Francisco, Lily Traywick knows that she is 180 degrees different from her perfectly fashioned parents as she prefers softball on the nearby sandlots while they enjoy an evening in Paris. She scoffs at gene pool theory as their DNA must have skipped her without a trace. Her parents own Traywick's of San Francisco, the chicest department store in the state. Lily, knowing she is going to own the store one day works in the Silver spoon children's wear, but is not that good at selling.

Lily has never been on a date, but her best friend Reagan Axness, who should have been the Traywick daughter, helps her with a makeover and arranges a date with Daniel. Lily has a good time, but realizes she and Daniel are going to remain friends. New store employee Sam March likes Lily and begins to date her. They fall in love, but Lily fears that he desires the new glamour image not the real sweatshirt soul that she truly is.

Anne Dayton and May Vanderbilt provide a delightful contemporary tale that emphasizes "to thine own self be true" especially if you want others to be true with you and to believe that you are being truthful with them. Lily is a wonderful protagonist struggling to make her parents proud of her, but not really understanding what they, especially her mom, wants of her until her mother takes drastic action late in the tale. The support cast, even Sam to a degree, enable the reader to better understand Lily's trepidations as much as from her self-analysis asides to the reader. CONSIDER LILY is a fine character study starring a somewhat typical chick lit heroine, who fans will adore.

Harriet Klausner