From the top you can see everything…except yourself It’s the most exclusive luxury apartment building on New York’s Upper East Side. If you don’t live there—you don’t know how to live… When Casey McCloy steps into The Bramford, she’s overwhelmed by the sophistication and elegance of it all. Fresh from the Midwest, she’s moved to NYC to live with her grandmother and attend the prestigious Meadowlark Academy. Here all that matters is who you know. The girl to know is Madison Macallister: popular, pretty, platinum-blond. So Casey aims to get in with Madison and her gorgeous gal-pals from the start. But after a city-haute makeover from her new frenemy Madison, Casey is wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and meeting the right people—including Drew, the boy-about-town who Madison thinks belongs to her and her alone…So I liked the novel as a whole but I was a little disappointed. I thought it was much to short. In the whole novel, nothing really exciting happened. But I did like the real-ness of the characters; they all had a deep and hard background to live from and overall the characters were awesomely descipted and full. (If that even makes sense.)
I felt there where some stuff missing, too. I would've liked more of background on Casey, like I didn't know what she was really like from Normal. I'm not a big fan of the rotating chapters, that's me being picky :), but here I thought it was nice because we got to find out what the characters are coming from and there reasons.
Overall the novel was good but like I said above it was shorter then I felt it could be. It wasn't physically short, it just SEEMED like the novel was shorter than it physically was. It would've been nice to actually have more insight of the characters in school instead of the one day. Also, throughout the entire novel I didn't know where the time line was. I thought there was also too much brands in the book. It just kind of got overwhelming for me but I do realize that this is novel has a lot to do with that, but I thought it was a step to high.
But I am excited for In Too Deep out January '09!!! I can't wait to see what happens and I refuse to read the excerpt from the back!
PS: Thanks for sending me the book Jennifer, I appreciate it!
Read On!
Kelsey
Hi Kelsey,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the review! The book's 250 pages, so I don't particularly think it's "short" by YA standards, and the first book is basically setting up the series itself, which will probably be more than just three books, so my editor wanted me to take the story slowly instead of rushing it, But you will probably like IN TOO DEEP a lot better because it moves pretty fast, and a lot happens.
And I guess I should've said exactly where the school is in NY, but that's something I can defintiely fix in book 2--thanks for pointing that out!
In terms of length, all the books will be around 250 pgs--I just don't write extremely long books, I guess!
All best,
JB
For 250 pages, I believe there was a strength given to each of the characters, and enough alure to make you crave the next book. The overall writing talents of Jennifer Banash was smooth and easily comforts the reader into each new chapter.
ReplyDeleteI would recommend this book to any mother who would like a good YA series to purchase for their daughters.
Kelseys Mom