Most stories are funny and inventive, although the book lacks purpose compared to the anthology it inspired called This Is Chick-Lit—"born out of anger," notes editor Lauren Baratz-Logsted. The first piece, Jennifer Coburn's "Two Literary Chicks," dramatizes the rift among female writers with the tidiness of a school play. Jo and Marley took the same fiction class at NYU, but Jo has written a bestselling novel while Marley and her "smarty-pants posse" are still describing drapery as "a metaphor for the tragic frailty of life." "Oh please," Jo says, "How 'bout a plot?" Then they swap manuscripts: Marley reads Jo's "bubblegum" book, tries on her Juicy Couture workout suit, and realizes " how very funny life is." True to stereotype, the stories that follow are glib and goal-oriented and focus on well-dressed women afraid of being 30. The book doesn't try to defend itself against the insult of acting like a girl.

"Who ever heard of such a thing in publishing," writes Baratz-Logsted in her preface. "What next . . . This Is Not a Literary Coming-of-Age Story?"