There’s a built-in audience for the London sisters’ adventures, but beneath all the glitter is a bunch of blah.
Hardworking sisters face glamorous romantic and professional challenges in Los Angeles.
Approachable fashionista-next-door video bloggers Sophia and Ava London have built an impressive reputation as savvy guides to fashion, accessories and personal grooming and are thrilled to be moving up in their shared career. An award naming the tightknit sisters Best Webstars of the Year leads to a licensing deal for their own makeup line—London Calling—with LuxeLife Cosmetics, and now the hottest men in Los Angeles are falling at their feet. Ava begins dating paparazzi-bait–turned–doting boyfriend Liam Carlson (but she continues to enjoy flirtatious banter with Dalton, a fellow volunteer at the local animal shelter). Meanwhile, Sophia, “boytoxing” after being blindsided by a terrible breakup, finds herself torn between wealthy smoothie Hunter Ralston and gorgeous Italian bartender-sculptor Giovanni. The Fowlers—who, like their protagonists, are beauty-and-fashion video bloggers—let their otherwise-effervescent modern fairy tale of sisterly love and self-actualization get bogged down in a dreary subplot of sibling separation anxiety and jealousy, basing it on the flimsiest of serial miscommunications and resolving it in a single paragraph. A last-chapter twist threatens the sisters’ reputation (and sets up a potential sequel), making the novel simply stop, rather than resolve.
There’s a built-in audience for the London sisters’ adventures, but beneath all the glitter is a bunch of blah. (Chick lit. 14-16)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-00618-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
If Becky actually were a manic pixie dream girl, there’d at least be some whimsy breaking up the dragging, self-centered,...
Nothing gives a boy moral superiority like being awkwardly aroused by the least popular girl in high school.
Tyler’s friends call him “jerk,” “idiot,” “dick” and “asshead.” Could he possibly be that bad? Is it that much of a problem that he’s been dating sweet Sydney Barrett for years while crushing hard on friendless Becky Webb, shunned by everyone else in school for being the town slut? In a narrative that interleaves exposition-heavy flashbacks with his present (wasted in the park, drunk on butterscotch-pudding shooters), Tyler describes the history of his relationship with Becky. Perhaps that should be his nonrelationship, because he has spent years being unkind to Sydney while gazing dreamily at Becky’s tattoo from across the cafeteria. Tyler’s tortured overtures to Becky would be more believably redemptive if he didn’t share in his classmates’ double standard of shaming, needing to find a reason for Becky’s sexual activities before he can find her worthy. Tyler, apparently, deserves a medal for choosing not to have meaningless sex with a suffering friend; what a hero.
If Becky actually were a manic pixie dream girl, there’d at least be some whimsy breaking up the dragging, self-centered, deeply unkind angst . (Fiction. 14-16)Pub Date: April 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-87005-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
A jumble of characters and stereotypes does not constitute worldbuilding. Skip
What ought to be a tense story of discovery after escaping a post-apocalyptic steampunk hellscape is overwhelmed by a bland, unremarkable love triangle.
At the end of Ashes of Twilight (2012), Wren led her fellow coal-mining villagers out of the dome that’s imprisoned them for generations. The outside world is not blazing afire, as their rulers have assured them ever since the comet that sent their people into the domes generations ago, during the Victoria era. Though the sun burns their pale skin, and the fresh air (ridiculously) kills many of the escapees, Wren is determined never to go back. Though the events of the first book ended Wren’s previous wearisome love triangle, never fear: A new charismatic young man appears, along with some other outlandish adventurers, to add ponderous romantic tension. Wren’s ogling of all the boys—“[t]he smooth breadth of their chests, the work of the muscles in the back, the dips and curves in the stomachs and hips”—is endless. She’s not even distracted by the nigh-feral attackers outside the dome: stinky, toothless and speaking in a laughable hillbilly dialect (in coastal Wales, these ruffians deliver such gems as “I’m ah-tellin-ya”).
A jumble of characters and stereotypes does not constitute worldbuilding. Skip . (Steampunk. 14-16)Pub Date: July 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-64176-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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