Lovely girl - a real cracker! (7)
I believe the answer is:
smasher
'a real cracker' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both people as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps you can see an association between them that I don't see?
'lovely girl' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'girl' could be 'sher' and 'sher' is located in the answer.
The remaining letters 'sma' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for smasher that I've seen before include "Beauty" , "Effective tennis player" , "dish" , "Pretty woman" , "an attacking tennis player?" .)