Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Graphia)
Publication date: September 2010
ISBN: 9780547235585
Source: e-book provided by NetGalley
When CG Silverman moves to a new town and a new school, she's determined to be a new person. When she manages to worm her way into the good graces of the most popular cliche at the school, she must maintain her new persona of rebel and dare devil. But, she finds lying about her past, her present, and just about everything else is required to maintain all those intricate and complicated relationships she has. Will she be able to keep all her secrets?
Things I Liked:
The book showed a complicated look at popularity and the kinds of things people will do to be popular. It was also quite interesting in its depictions of the carelessness we feel toward other peoples' feelings. CG was not a person I liked or related to at all, especially in the way she treated others, but I did see that I can become just as cavalier with the feelings of other people. It played kind of a cautionary story for me.
Things I Didn't Like:
I actually really didn't like the characters or story much. CG is a sarcastic, crass, potty-mouthed jerk, to pretty much everyone throughout. She toys with people over and over and doesn't even seem to care, until she loses friends. I really got tired of her. The story was fairly interesting, but held nothing original or terribly entertaining to me. When CG does "figure it out," the message is pounded into our heads so obviously that it lacks any kind of subtlety. In short, I just wasn't impressed.
Read-alikes:
The Real Real by Emma Mclaughlin and Nicola Kraus
Snap by Carol Snow
BOOK CONTENT RATINGS:
s-factor: !@#$
plenty throughout, some strong
mrg-factor: XX
lots of discussion of it, not much actual descriptions
v-factor: none
Overall rating: **
I really liked the cover of this one, but it seems a bit deceptive. It looks light-hearted and even sweet, but totally isn't on the inside. What covers have you seen that seem deceptive?
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I don't like deceptive book covers. I've noticed a few are like that. The book "Pure" by Terra McVoy, and it was a lot deeper than the cover indicated. I also think the "Twilight" covers are very deceptive. (Not that I've read them) and also the blue "Mockingjay" cover. It kind of put the idea across that there would be freedom and peace, but I didn't feel that at all.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, those are a few of my rants!
PS. Are you on Shelfari.com?
This doesn't sound like my kind of book anyway, so I don't think it'll be going on my TBR pile any time soon...
ReplyDeleteDeceptive covers? All I can think of is those old scifi novels from the 50s/60s/70s when there was almost always some variant of a chick in a chain mail bikini, which bore no resemblance at all to the story within. I remember one that my uncle had (I've forgotten the title), which had the obligatory c-i-cm-b in the tentacles of a giant squid, neither of which featured in the actual story at all!
BookMaid, I thought the blue Mockingjay was a bit off too - I expected more peace, but got more violence. Interesting. And, no I'm not on Shelfari. I regularly do goodreads updates and never really do LibraryThing updates, though I'm on there too.
ReplyDeleteAndie, oh how I laughed at the chick in a chain mail bikini image! Someone should write some pseudo sci-fi involving a chain mail bikini, since it just sounds so impossibly uncomfortable :)
Baha. =D They say you can't judge a book by it's cover, but really; A cover is what draws you in in the first place. 80% of the time when I pick up a new book it's the cover that wins me. The other 20% of the time is me ignoring a hideous cover and seeing how good the book is behind it. =) Some covers can be deceptively bad, Ranger's Apprentice: Sorcery in the North, for instance.
ReplyDeleteBookMaid, I think I depend less on the covers for my choices, but it certainly plays a huge part. I definitely like the US covers of the Ranger's Apprentice books more than the Australian.
ReplyDelete