Dean, Zoey. Girls on film.
DEAN, Zoey. Girls on film. (An A-List Novel). Little, Brown. 252p. c2004. 0-316-00079-s. $8.99. SZoey Dean has her finger on the pulse of pop culture in this second installment of the A-List series, following The A-List. Fans of Gossip Girl will adore Dean's series. The characters live in posh Beverly Hills and are all young, beautiful, and ridiculously privileged. They mingle with celebrities, name-drop the most current and hottest actors and musicians, and despite being high school-aged, spend very little time there--surely it's too banal for this fun-loving book. The book is not driven by plot, but rather by characters readers will love to hate. The thin plot revolves around the relationships of Anna Percy, a transplant from New York. Her sister is fresh out of rehab, her father is ineffective and peripheral, and of course she has to choose between the two boys who have fallen for her.
This is definitely a book for older teens: curse words litter the pages and there are plenty of references to sex, drugs, and drinking. Dean appears to have literary aspirations, setting up early on a comparison with the themes in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby ("old wealth versus new wealth, individualism and self-discovery versus easy money and group-think"). The themes may be similar, but that's about as literary as this book gets. The characters admit much of what they say is cliched or sounds like lines in a bad soap opera. That said, this is still a fun, juicy read that is sure to rope in lots of teenage girls. Amanda MacGregor, Boston, MA
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| Author: | MacGregor, Amanda |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Kliatt |
| Article Type: | Book Review |
| Date: | May 1, 2004 |
| Words: | 266 |
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