In my review of Dan Brown’s “Inferno” I mentioned how I tended to use his “Da Vinci Code” as a measure for other books in the adventure genre. My chick-lit yardstick tends to be this, a classy and highly readable debut novel by the American born writer. It stands out from the pile because of Tessaro’s use of a clever device- a real life tome from the 1960’s on “Elegance” offering advice to women on how such a virtue could be achieved. Tessaro got permission to use this book centrally in her novel (and befriended the author). This provides a structure for her novel and it works extremely well. Main character Louise, living in 21^st Century London decides to apply the “elegance” philosophy to her life. Things begin to change dramatically for her, from the loveless rut of her marriage, to her appearance, career etc. I didn’t find it laugh-out-loud funny but it did make me smile quite a lot. It reads extremely well and the A-Z format keeps the attention throughout. I warmed to the refreshingly literary feel. Tessaro now has five novels available for our delectation and she is certainly an author on my to-be-read again list.