"Nature Girl" by Carl Hiaasen

It's quite rare for me to read book after book by the same author (unless that author is Georgette Heyer - you may have noticed...) but in the last couple of months, I have become very fond of the writing of Carl Hiaasen. He has a real talent for the comedic and sarcastic style that so many authors wish they could pull off and he creates characters that are easy to relate to and care about.

In "Nature Girl" he introduces us to several of these, most notable of which are Honey Santana, a single mom living in a Florida trailer park with her son Fry, a clever and overly mature for his age teenager. In most homes, computers are protected so that children don't have access to specific websites but in this trailer, it's the other way round - Fry has put control on the computer to limit his mother's use of it because Honey is more than a little wacko and when she gets obsesses about something, she is apt to do something pretty stupid.
Which is just what happens when an unfeeling douche of a telesales guy calls Honey and Fry in the middle of dinner to sell them something they don't want, at a price they can't afford. The call spirals into a fight and Honey snaps and starts putting together a plan to get back at the sales guy.
So starts an adventures on Dismal Key in the Everglades which involves (in no particular order):

• A Seminole Indian bearing the name of Sammy Tigertail and weighed down by a heavy identity crisis. 
• A college girl gone wild. 
• A semi-famous mistress of a murderer with a body that drives men wild. 
• A hapless telesales guy who has lost his job and is about to lose his wife. 
• A divorced man named Perry Skinner whose ex-wife Honey is a real basket case (...). 
• A bunch of born-again christians. 
• A disgusting and deranged sexist fish monger. 

Chasing each other around the small island, they all have personalities that are to some extent outside of the normal and when they are mixed, a true mayhem of misunderstandings and calamities break lose making for a hilarious story about forgiveness and about how sometimes, the most best people are the ones we call crazy.

"Skios" by Michael Frayn

Looking for the perfect read for a holiday or a relaxing Sunday? One that will make you laugh with intelligent twists? Look no further than "Skios" by Michael Frayn... 

Skios a is a little paradise on earth, a warm, sunny Greek island in the middle of a glittering, blue sea, is the setting for an annual event where glamour meets science, the Fred Toppler Foundation's annual House Party. Nikki Hook, PA to Mrs. Fred Toppler, the dancer formerly known as Bahama LeStarr, is in charge of making the House Party a roaring success and she is damned if anything is going to spoil this opportunity to secure a promotion. Lightly tanned with discreetly blonde highlights, she is the embodiment of efficiency, when she's waiting in the airport to pick up the guest of honour Dr. Wilfred Norman. Unfortunately, the good-looking, charming man introducing himself as Dr. Wilfred Norman is not actually the distinguished doctor but instead professional charmer and chancher per excellence, Oliver Fox.

Oliver Fox is a ladies man with a penchant for making up identities. In certain London circles (among socialites and hedge fund wives), he is notorious. He party trick seems to revolve around picking up needy women and then sponging off them for as long as possible. This particular weekend, he has come to Skios for a hot weekend with a woman whose rich financier fiancee is away on a weekend trip but when he spots the dishy Nikki in the airport, he suddenly decides to try out the identity as Dr. Wilfred Norman.

Enough to say that hilarity ensues with Oliver Fox playing the important academic dignitary and explaining away to fellow scientists as only a true conman can and Dr. Norman enjoying the dubious honour of being trapped in a secluded villa with a beautiful woman who seems to think that he is a rapist.

"Skios" by Michael Frayn was longlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize and for a reason. It combines hilarious with elegantly written in a way that very few authors can while creating characters that engage  the reader and come to life. Many authors who master the comedic genre rely largely on the plot to carry them but in "Skios", the characters are what drive the story and bring forward the laughs. This is holiday reading for the intelligent reader who wants a little more and I can recommend it as the  most perfect entertainment for an afternoon on the beach or in the garden. 

"Star Island" by Carl Hiaasen

There are books that are written in a way that makes them obvious contenders for a film contract. Like Twilight or Hunger Games. The authors might not have been thinking this when they wrote them (though honestly with the money up for grabs in the movie business, they might have had it in the back of their minds) but the result still is a book that is ready to transition to the big screen. “Star Island” by Carl Hiaasen is one of those books. It is so ready to be made into a film and I’m pretty sure that it would be tagged with words such “Funny movie of the year” or “Action-packed comedy hit”. It has all the elements – it is even set in sunny Florida, mainly on South Beach, and conjures up a sun-shimmering blue ocean, palm tree and babes in bikinis. It is a place for charmed lives and in this place, young actress Ann DeLusia lives a … eh… confusing life. 

Her job might be one of the simultaneously worst and best jobs in the world. On the pro side, it requires little effort and there’s no requirement to be in the office 9 to 5, it also comes with a clothing allowance and business travel. On the con side, she is always on call and it’s not exactly an identity and integrity boosting job… Ann has landed herself the dubious honour of being stand-in for the volatile airhead superstar Cherry Pye. Having managed that difficult transition from the pageant world to international stardom, Cherry is determined to make the most of her fame by doing as many drugs and as many men as possible. She is a skank and most of the time, she is a strung-out, high as a kite skank. Not exactly the perfect employer and Ann's role mostly consists of pretending to be Cherry at parties, where the star herself is too out of it to appear. 

There is a whole industry around Cherrry and another person who makes a living out of her fame is the paparazzo Bang Abbott. In his vision, Cherry is one snort away from a fatal OD and he is planning to be the photographer that captures her final days. Bang Aboott is a pretty pathetic figure and in his quest to get close to Cherry, he ends up kidnapping the innocent Ann instead.

Ann is nothing if not feisty and she takes her kidnapping with a cool head and barbed wit. Throw into the mix a crazy hermit living in the Florida swaps on a quest to save Ann, a greedy property developer, a father of the star with little interest in her life and little conviction of her intelligence, a mother of the star with big ambitions and a manager with no conscience. It is a scenario ready to explode and it is a hilarious read.

Fancy something that'll make you laugh? And make you think of all of the Britneys and Lindsays of this world and wonder if this is what it is really like (disclaimer! You might end up pitying them!)? Then go for a holiday on "Star Island", it's bound to make you laugh.