Exclusively Chloe by J.A. Yang: T2T Tour

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J.A.Yang has slummed it in the valley with the Wakefield twins; slumber partied with Huey, Dewey and Louie; joined Krakow in stalking Angela; and climbed every mountain with the Von Trapps.

Originally from San Diego, he's lived and traveled the world (okay, not all of it) in pursuit of that most elusive of targets -- inspiration.

He's authored and published a book, written for online and offline publications, and maintained a variety of popular blogs on subjects ranging from movies and technology to personal stories and amateur musings. He's just wrapped up his second book, a fiction novel for teens, and is hard at work on his third one.
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Title: Exclusively Chloe
Author: J.A. Yang
Publisher: Puffin
Reading Level: Young Adult, 14+
Publication Date: May 14, 2009
Pages: 224
My Edition: Trade Paperback
Amazon Page

Rating: C-
Plot - 15/20
Characters - 15/20
Writing - 15/20
Originality - 13/20
Entertainment - 6/10
Recommendation - 6/10
Total: 70/100

Summary:
Chloe-Grace can’t help it—she’s spectacular. How could she not be with celebrity parents who have been the queen and king of Hollywood for years? And Chloe is a celebrity all unto herself as well— she’s the first celebrity-adopted kid in Hollywood. But now Chloe’s sixteen, and she is tired of every undesired moment of the world’s attention. She wonders what it would be like to be a “normal” kid in a regular school. To really understand it, though, she would need to go undercover. So after getting a “make-under” at the hands of her mother’s fabulous stylist, she enters the “real” world. But she soon finds out that there is just as much drama there as there is in Hollywood….

Review:
I got this book to review for Traveling to Teens without really knowing what the book was about. I know, that was bad of me. But I liked the cover a bit. It looked cute. Then after i got the book, I read what it is about, and I have to say, I probably wouldn't of picked it up if I hadn't. I had even heard from someone that they didn't like it. So my expectations were kind of bad.

It wasn't as bad as I thought though. It took a while to get to the main aspect of the novel, the characters weren't that great. The writing was that good, the plot was somewhat unoriginal, but it wasn't horrible. It just wasn't spectacular (notice the pun) either.

The writing felt really awkward in some parts of the novel. The dialogue mainly. It didn't feel natural, and I felt kind of like Chloe's thoughts were uncompleted. Does that even make sense? But the story flowed well enough and it didn't get too boring or anything, so that's good.

The characters were, obviously, unrelateable. I didn't really like Chloe as a character, and Chloe's friend, Rachelle, I absolutely hated. I could not stand her. And the other characters weren't really well developed, we never got to really know them that well.

A bad part is that I have seen this plot over and over again. Celebrity, doesn't like her life, disguises herself, lives a perfect life in disguise, everything comes undone. I've read at least three other books about it. It is getting very old. And the worst is, I think this was the worst novel that I have read about it.

So, in short, this novel was just okay. Not really good, and not horrible. But it's still not even worth buying the trade paperback. Go to the library for it.
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And here's the interview!