Gorgeous (Paul Rudnick)

SUMMARY: Inner beauty wants out.

When eighteen-year-old Becky Randle’s mother dies, she’s summoned from her Missouri trailer park to meet Tom Kelly, the world’s top designer. He makes her an impossible offer: He’ll create three dresses to transform Becky from a nothing special girl into the most beautiful woman who ever lived.

Becky thinks Tom is a lunatic, or that he’s producing a hidden camera show called World’s Most Gullible Poor People. But she accepts, and she’s remade as Rebecca. When Becky looks in the mirror, she sees herself – an awkward mess of split ends and cankles. But when anyone else looks at Becky, they see pure five-alarm hotness. Soon Rebecca is on the cover of Vogue, the new Hollywood darling, and dating celebrities. Then Becky meets Prince Gregory, heir to the British throne, and everything starts to crumble. Because Rebecca aside, Becky loves him. But to love her back, Gregory would have to look past the blinding Rebecca to see the real girl inside. And Becky knows there’s not enough magic in the world.

MY THOUGHTS:

This book was fairly interesting. It kind of read like a parody because even though at the heart of the book there's a good message, there's all this humor and wit. I will admit this isn't the BEST book I've read this summer but it's definitely one I'd like to re-read in person (aka not a e-book but a plastic covered hardcover from a library).

However, in the beginning I found it hard for me to get into it. I actually started this book weeks ago but the first couple of chapters bored me and were taking to long to get to the plot that I forgot all about it until last night. Not to mention the descriptions of the outfits people were wearing and other things were sooooo long. I started skipping those paragraphs so get the point of the scene. Not a good thing I know but still. Over-all I did mostly enjoy this book there were some plot holes.

It's revealed that the Tom Kelly that Becky meets isn't exactly real. Or alive I mean. It turns out that he's her dad and he died before she was born from AIDS (I could be wrong about the disease but it was never stated by name). He really did love her mom and she made him promise to give her daughter beauty too. So I'm guessing that the reason no one saw him for the 20-ish years before Becky came to NYC is that he was dead. In the beginning I thought maybe he was the devil, and I wasn't the only one but the whole death thing and how he came back to life thing wasn't really touched on. So I don't get what happened. Just that after Becky got her happily ever after, he called her and said goodbye, her dead mom said she loved her and the call was over. I was/am so confused.

Also I wasn't that invested in Greg and Becky's love story. I thought it was somewhat interesting the way they're conversations went and I think even if they loved each other, I don't think they were IN LOVE. But maybe that would happen in time. And at least it wasn't that "insta-Love" crap. I kind of wanted Becky-as-Rebecca to ask Greg if he could still love her if she didn't look the way she did. I mean, sure the end of the book answers this question but I'm curious to hear Greg's reaction to that especially considering his WTF reaction when she pulled off her veil at their wedding and was just Becky after that. Lol, although I don't know how she and Rocher managed to run away without the Brit police catching up to them.

I really did enjoy Becky's best friend although she kind of annoyed me when she got into a fight with Lady Jessalyn (the one England actually wants Prince Greg to marry) and only Becky is implicated in the press for it. It was ridiculous. And I could not believe that neither one of them thought to save any of the Rebecca money she had to have made from her VOGUE shoot or the movie she did. But it did seem very dramatic that they became poor after that. It kind of reminded me of the end of [book: Jane Eyre] after Jane runs from Rochester and goes and lives with these other people.

Anyway, over all this book is a interesting read. Although I think the writing and plot holes do give the reading a bit of a hard time (and I NEVER notice plot holes) I definitely think this book offers something to readers that other books similar to this don't...lol although I can't exactly describe what that is.

MY DE-CRYPTION OF THE BOOKS CHARACTERS AND THEIR REAL LIFE COUNTERPARTS

Tom Kelly=Ralph Lauren

Prince Gregory=Prince William

Prince Jasper=Prince Harry

Princess Alicia=Princess Diana

Queen Catherine=Queen Elizabeth II

Lady Jessalyn=Kate Middleton

Shop-a-Lot=Save-a-Lot/Shop-n-Save (I figured this out from my time in Missouri for college)

Valu-Brite=Wal-Mart

Another Little Piece (Kate Karyus Quinn)

Another Little Piece is about the return of a girl named Annaliese to her hometown after disappearing a little under a year ago after trading her soul for the lust of her crush, Logan, the running back on her school football team. However, what she didn't realize is that she got cheated in more ways then one. As soon as she gives it up to Logan in the woods, she tells him he loves her and he pretends not to hear as he goes back to the party they're at. 

But it sucks for Annaliese because now she's lost everything and she's given up her soul for a boy who has what he wanted. Anna, the name of the one Annaliese gives her soul too, tells Annaliese she has to pay now. So Annaliese cuts Anna's heart out of her current body and then eats it, not realizing that in doing so she has given Anna control of her body. 

However, something goes wrong when the body Anna-is-currently-in's mother shows up and messes up the ceremony spiraling into a series of events that leads to Anna's memory loss and the beginning of the novel.

When Anna-as-Annaliese returns she runs into every love interest she's going to have in a record amount of time. Lucky for us though, it's never any contest who she has feelings for or any kind of love triangle. 

Eric/Franky is the creepy loser who manipulated Anna into her more than nine-lives years ago who insists that he loves her and she'll give in to moving onto the next body when the hunger for a new body takes over her. Apparently, the first time she switched bodies, it took over her and she killed her original family. 

There's Logan, whose role in the climax I should've seen coming but missed. I think that the lust may have evolved into something else because the first time Anna-as-Annaliese runs into him, he drunkingly reveals his guilt of taking her virginity and leaving her in the woods in front of the whole school turning her from a poor-victim into a home-wrecking whore.

Eventually, Logan becomes prey to Eric/Franky when he wants Annaliese's love and gives up his body and soul for it. 

And then there's Dex, the boy next door who's not as normal as you might think. Dex can see people's deaths and saw Annaliese's years ago, therefore recognizing that she is someone else not that that stops him from developing feelings for her.

I liked this book for a number of reasons.  I enjoyed how the author took a step away from the Twilight formula. I loved the romance factor. Anna and her love interest, Dex never say "I love you" to each other in the book. They never become creepily obsessed with each other or even get anywhere close to having those I-love-you feelings. And there's something about Dex that makes him so much more compelling then most YA love interests especially the paranormal versions. 

I also liked that it was a standalone novel instead of the author being greedy and trying to bank off of a series of books. And I also enjoyed that not every mystery of the book was wrapped up at the end. We didn't really learn about why the Physician was who he was and did what he did or about his sisters. But I'm glad we didn't because not everything had to be wrapped up at the end although I am curious but I feel like the explanation concocted wouldn't live up to the standards of the mystery.

This book was nothing like I thought it was going to be. But that is a good thing. I thought it was a realistic, suspenseful mystery and while it was two-thirds of those things, it also had supernatural tones too. And not the supernatural tones most books have. This book was actually dark and that was part of the reason I enjoyed it. Now-and-days most paranormal, supernatural books try to follow the success that Stephenie Meyer discovered with a Twilight-esque formula and everything but switch the new girl for the boy boy or the supernatural entity being the girl instead of the boy and blah-blah-blah. This novel was far from Twilight and I loved that about it.

Hidden [House of Night 10]

Sadly, I literally had to force myself to read this book. That's how bad or how far this series has come too. I remember when I first found Marked in 9th grade and how in love with the series I was. I found the next book or two and read them over that same weekend. But now...I'm so over it. It's like the authors just want to profit now. I used to go back and re-read the entire series before reading the newest installment (this was supposed to be over a lonnnggggg time ago) but I don't feel like doing that anymore.

So what I noticed was there were all these characters, so many that I couldn't keep them straight and half of them sounded the same dialogue wise. Like the boyfriends of Aphrodite, Zoey and Stevie Rae all sounding the same. THEY'RE DIFFERENT! I feel like Stevie Rae's boyfriend would be more reserved and quiet and definitely not PDA with Stevie Rae (even if it is cute_. And Darius and Stark wouldn't sound similar because Darius is supposed to be a grown man!

And another thing I noticed, for such a feminism society that this world is built up off of, isn't weird that pretty much every girl/woman who is evil is a slut?

~Neferet,

~Erin, after she suddenly decides that she likes Dallas after she and Shaunee stop acting like two-girls-one-brain and strips off her clothes and does God knows what with him.

~Nicole was portrayed as a slut as was Aphrodite before she and Zoey became friends.
Every girl who had chosen to be evil is shown to be a slut.

"Sluts equals evilness" is a stupid mindset not to mention sexist mindset that goes completely against everything that feminism stands for what with gender equality and what-not. Those who are branded sluts are shown to be victims of gender inequality.

And I heard how the authors don't/still don't plan for Zoey to settle down so that's why they keep adding all these guys. Okay, that might have made sense in the beginning. Zoey had been with Heath since she was little so it kind of made sense that she decided to try something new with Erik and then Loren came and took her virginity opening up a whole new relationship when Stark came along but this is ridiculous. Stark being all jealous and possessive and Heath coming back as (basically) a Minotaur is just skirting around the issue. By choosing one guy to date she's not choosing forever. You could leave the ending open to interpretation so that we can think whatever we want, but this is ridiculous.

Okay, I'm done ranting. Now my actual review: Nothing happened. 

• Erin turned evil/slutty and became Dallas' new girlfriend.

• Everyone realized that the bull-boy really is Heath.

• Kalona really is "Good" now.

• Erebus is revealed as his brother and shows up twice in the story.

• Erik's thoughts are revealed (he's actually more of a jerk/such a guy then  I realized so I actually enjoyed this) as well as his interest in Shaylin--or rather love interest.

• Zoey's grandma is kidnapped by Neferet and is saved.

• Neferet explodes into a bunch of spiders and is exiled by the High Council or whatever their name is.

• Damien gets a new love interest.

• Lenobia's new love interest Travis is revealed as her soul mate who died a long time ago and came back Heath style.

• Nicole starts turning nice.

The end of this series doesn't even sound appealing anymore now that Kalona is on the good side for real now.

I forced myself to read this and I probably will force myself to read the last two books because I don't want to have wasted all of this time and effort. But really, Cast family, this series was supposed to be done along time ago. I'm in college now; I have no time to read. Why can't you just be done like everything else these past two years: Gossip Girl, the Twilight movies, the Hunger Games trilogy, Smallville, and a bunch of other stuff.

End already!