Kristin Billerbeck is credited as the first Christian chick-lit author. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but she certainly deserves to be!

Her Ashley Stockingdale novels are awesome, with the typical chick-lit trappings of an independent-ish woman with a shopping obsession and boy troubles.

Her Trophy Wives Club straddles the line between chick-lit and serious womens fiction with a hard look at divorce among Christians, and how Christians treat divorce (and divorcees).

But my all-time favorite Billerbeck book is SplitEnds.

In SplitEnds, Billerbeck makes a complete 180 from the typical chick-lit and creates a heroine out of a small town hairdresser who only goes to LA to learn to be the best- not to be rich and famous.

She initially hates couture, preferring her old, worn out jeans, hates shopping, hates everything that makes LA, LA. But she grows as a person as well as professionally. She learns to make wise choices, and to indulge a little. And to be honest? She struggles the most with sexual temptation, which makes her seem more real to me as a woman.

Erynn Mangum's first novel MissMatch had me laughing so hard that the bed shook so hard it woke my husband up. Several times. It's a good thing I finished it overnight.

The plot of each of Mangum's novels revolves around matchmaking, which may seem obvious from the titles MissMatch, ReMatch, and MatchPoint. The stakes are light, but the romps are hilarious, and anyone addicted to chocolate and coffee will wish Lauren was their best friend.

I wonder if it's a problem that I occasionally substitute her novels for actual social interaction?

Ever wanted to read a chick-lit about a woman who's already rich and famous? What's left to strive for? Ah... love and happiness.

I have to list Hauck's Diva Nashvegas because it's the only one of her books that I've read- so far. But I loved it, and can't wait to read the Lost in Nashvegas (the predecessor), as well as a few of her more recent novels.