Size 14 Is Not Fat Either (Heather Wells Series #2) »

Keeping up with Meg Cabot is tricky: the Princess Diaries author turns out light entertaining novels for teens and adults at a furious pace. Which is good news for her fans, who snap them up as fast as she can write them!

Former pop star Heather Wells has settled nicely into her new life as assistant dorm director at New York College--a career that does not require her to drape her size 12 body in embarrassingly skimpy outfits. She can even cope (sort of) with her rocker ex-boyfriend's upcoming nuptials, which the press has dubbed The Celebrity Wedding of the Decade. But she's definitely having a hard time dealing with the situation in the dormitory kitchen--where a cheerleader has lost her head on the first day of the semester. (Actually, her head is accounted for--it's her torso that's AWOL.)

Surrounded by hysterical students--with her ex-con father on her doorstep and her ex-love bombarding her with unwanted phone calls--Heather welcomes the opportunity to play detective . . . again. If it gets her mind off her personal problems--and teams her up again with the gorgeous P.I. who owns the brownstone where she lives--it's all good. But the murder trail is leading the average-sized amateur investigator into a shadowy world. And if she doesn't watch her step, Heather will soon be singing her swan song!

Publishers Weekly

In Cabot's entertaining, if flawed, second cozy (after 2006's Size 12 Is Not Fat) to feature Heather Wells, a teen music idol turned student-life employee at an NYU-like New York College, a cheerleader in Heather's dorm turns up dead or, at least her head turns up, stewed almost beyond recognition in a cafeteria pot. Lindsay Combs was bubbly and popular, but as Heather digs deeper, she learns that Lindsay wasn't all sweetness and light. She slept around and was involved with obnoxious fraternity boys who made pin money dealing drugs. If solving Lindsay's murder isn't enough to keep Heather busy, her father, recently released after a 20-year prison sentence, shows up on her doorstep, looking for a renewed relationship and a place to stay. The roster of suspects is underdeveloped, and the denouement is both predictable and implausible, but Heather's charm and wit amply compensate. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.