Revenge of the Girl With the Great Personality

Personal Note: I joined my work's softball team, which had its first game last night (we won and I scored a run!) Consequently I am super behind on commenting but will be checking out what was posted on my blog as well as on all of yours tonight and over the weekend.

Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality by Elizabeth Eulberg
4/5 stars
Point, 2013
261 pages
YA Contemporary

Source: Received an e-ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I've read all of Eulberg's previous work and I feel like I really click with her writing style so I was thrilled to check this one out especially as I would certainly consider myself a girl with a great personality (ahem :)

Our main character is Lexi and she has long bemoaned the way that boys skip over her, recognizing that she's fun and funny but paying attention to the pretty girls. In an effort to encourage boldness in her friend, she is dared to give herself a style makeover, amping up her look and soon garnering that attention she's always desired. But does Lexi want a boyfriend who only likes her because of her looks? Adding to her situation is her younger sister's beauty pageant entries, which her mother insists they entirely rearrange their lives around and which is bankrupting the family.

So there are sort of two main stories here: Lexi's outer makeover (because her inner personality is fabulous!) and the family's involvement in pageants, with the two colliding and overlapping but which I wanted to address separately. The makeover storyline is pretty predictable with me calling most of the plot points far in advance (re: the boys) and feeling comforted when they did in fact come to pass.

The plot with her mother and sister was a bit more surprising to me. The younger sister Mackenzie initially seems to be a huge brat with the mother catering to their every whim (the parents are divorced with the father basically dropping his family) but as the story progresses, there are more nuances. Mackenzie doesn't seem to love pageants as much as she used to and the mother is seeking solace in the competitions that she can't find elsewhere. She is a bit on the villainous side (wait til you read what she does to Lexi!) but they do have some good confrontations that will hopefully lead to a better home life. When I read, I sometimes feel a little overprotective of characters and this was the case here, indicating to me that Lexi is a very sympathetic girl. I think a lot of readers will be able to empathize with at least part of her situation.

Overall: Another great entry from Eulberg, tackling some deeper issues in a smart and mostly humorous way.

Other Opinions:
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Candace's Book Blog
Heise Reads & Recommends
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Take a Bow

Take a Bow by Elizabeth Eulberg
3.5/5 stars
Point, 2012
278 pages
YA Contemporary Performing Arts

Source: Library

After loving The Lonely Hearts Club and Prom & Prejudice, I knew I would be reading Eulberg's next book. Then I saw a ton of positive reviews of this, which got me even more excited! Unfortunately while there were some things I liked, there was something that really annoyed me (coughethancough).

Let's start with what attracted me to this book besides previous experience with the author's writing. The setting is a performing arts high school, a personal favorite setting of mine. I love reading about all of these kids with tremendous talent and potential and this was no exception. The scenes where the kids were practicing or performing were among my favorite. I also liked reading about the competition and nerves behind the scenes even though it caused me anxiety; it was a pressure cooker situation.

Then we have the characters. By far, my favorite was Carter, former child-star who still has his fans but is longing to leave acting. As he rethinks his life and makes big choices, he retained a down-to-earth sweetness that made his perspective very enjoyable. Next up is Sophie, the aspiring star who sings. Ever since she was a child, Sophie has been driven, keeping an eye out for her big break that will launch her to stardom. But life at school has been hard for Sophie. Although she has managed to date Carter for two years, she sees herself increasingly not getting the roles she thinks she deserves. To Sophie, this pushes her harder; to the reader, we see her stabbing people in the back and trampling anyone she finds in her way. She is not nice and I know a lot of other reviewers have not liked her. But I felt really bad for Sophie, seeing her pain at her ambitions going unfulfilled but without the maturity to examine herself critically.

The other two characters also need some help, in my opinion. Ethan is a self-sabotaging idiot. For the past few years, he was involved in a destructive cycle of cheating on his girlfriend, writing heartbreaking songs to win her back, and on and on. This was exacerbated by his drinking problem and his unresolved feelings for his best friend Emme. Honestly-I hated Ethan. I cannot handle the self-destruction in his character and I did not see him redeeming himself. I am also worried that his drinking problem was basically tossed aside and ignored; I would have loved some resolution there.

Emme is a much more palatable character but her soft spot for Ethan made me lower my opinion of her. Emme is basically the main character with important relationships with all three of the other characters and she undergoes the biggest transformation from shy wallflower to singer, songwriter, and face-melting guitarist. If she could have held strong to her conviction to not involve herself with Ethan, preserving merely a friendship with him, I would have liked her a lot more. But since she lowered herself, I end with disappointment.

I was also disappointed with the writing. By that I mean, it felt very different from the other two books I've read. Whereas I felt very clearly that they came from the same writer, this seemed like a radical departure and it was not one I liked. And the four perspectives and the short length (not even 300 pages) really impaired my ability to connect with any of the characters.

So I think I would sum up my problems with this book as 1. Too many characters for the length, leading to superficiality on some parts and 2. Deep hatred for the handling of the Ethan character.

Overall: I love swirly scripts for titles and choosing to show Emme was a wise decision.

The Lonely Hearts Club

The Lonely Hearts Club by Elizabeth Eulberg
Point, 2010
285 pages
YA; Contemporary
4/5 stars

Source: Library

After reading Prom and Prejudice earlier this year, I knew I'd want to check out Eulberg's debut work, hoping for another delightful funny book. I received that, including several scenes where I literally laughed out loud, earning myself some "you're crazy" looks from my sister. What to the evs!

Penny Lane Bloom (yes her parents are Beatles fanatics...and I do mean fanatics. They became vegetarians, not for any moral reasons but because Paul McCartney is a vegetarian) has just had her heart broken by a long-time crush and has decided to swear off boys for the rest of her high-school career. They are just jerks who cause girls to change themselves and dump their friends in order to secure their approval.  Now while Penny may go a bit far in the original manifesto, she has a valid point. A lot of high school boys suck (at least in my personal experience) so why not focus on having fun with your friends and figuring out who you are during those pivotal years?  Thus she becomes the founding (and for a time sole) member of The Lonely Hearts Club, committed to staying single in high school and rocking out to the music of four guys who will never let her down.

Needless to say, this ends up being very popular with the female students at Penny's high school who band together to support each other as one tries out for basketball while another seeks treatment for anorexia.  They focus on friendship and being there for each other. Of course it gets complicated when some of the male students are upset by the loss of their girlfriends and even the principal tries to intervene as well as when a guy who might actually be nice seems to like Penny and she returns the feelings.

Now there weren't any real surprises in this book as it's fairly obvious who Penny's love interest will be and I felt that some of the boy characters were treated much too harshly.  Additionally because of the number of girls involved in The Lonely Hearts Club, some of them don't have much personality nor do they receive enough attention.  But I loved their burgeoning feminism and passion for the idea as well as their ability to soften some of their stances in order to give the reader a happy ending.

Overall: A cute, funny, fast contemporary read!

Cover: I love the feminine take on the famous Abbey Road album cover.

Prom and Prejudice

Prom and Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg
Point, 2011
227 pages
YA; Contemporary; Austen
4.5/5 stars

Source: Received an ARC via Amazon Vine in exchange for an honest review.

This book is pretty much exactly what you would think it is based on the cover and title: a YA contemporary romance inspired by Jane Austen's beloved novel Pride and Prejudice (aka my favorite book!) This one stars Lizzie Bennet and her best friend Jane Netherfield as they navigate the tricky social scene culminating in prom at their boarding school Longbourn and their relationships with Will Darcy and Charles Bingley at the neighboring Pemberley Academy.

Although largely faithful to the novel and bringing its own sense of humor (there were many laugh out loud passages), there were some changes that I simply have to mention!

First it's told from Lizzie's point of view instead of third person like the original.  I have found this very common in YA lit and I think it helps you sympathize with the character much faster.  Second I found Lydia much more grating in this novel than I ever have in P&P; girl was so annoying!  Another change was that Darcy's family is actually accepting of Lizzie although a de Bourgh does still attempt to interfere.

Probably the most important change, in my mind, is that no longer is Lizzie seeking a mate for life and in order to protect her upon the death of her father; instead the big event is prom, which while important to the characters is hardly the same situation.  This takes away some of the dramatic tension that has made P&P so beloved. I understand though because it's hard to modernize P&P.

One change I did not entirely like was a very unsubtle emphasis on the snobbery of the girls at Longbourn in their relations with scholarship student Lizzie.  It was repeated so many times and I didn't think it needed to be hammered home so much.  That would be my only complaint about this book.

Overall: A quick modernization of P&P with an admirable Lizzie and many funny bits.

Cover: I love the bright pink and I feel that the dress conveys a plot point in the book but it's not entirely accurate.