2016, 198p, YA Contemporary
My Rating=4 Stars
Source: Received a copy for an honest review
"One ordinary girl, one extraordinary moment" There are three things everyone notices about Alice. 1. Her super-hot rugby boyfriend. 2. Her sophisticated, totally gorgeous best friend. 3. Her very noticeable 38-inch long legs.
Alice is tall - just under six feet to be exact - but her self-esteem couldn't be smaller. When her relationship starts wavering, Alice's perfectly beautiful best friend somehow convinces her to join a modelling competition, "for a confidence boost." But Alice is just a normal girl; she loves ice cream too much, has an unhealthy addiction to American TV and lusts after the elusive thigh gap. She can't even walk in heels, let alone in a bikini, but she finds herself joining Runway Models anyway.
The finale is only a few months away.
Will Alice catwalk her way to self-confidence or fail, proving everyone right? People can surprise you.
This book starts in September, as school is starting. Alice's current obsession is getting the perfect thigh gap and she's reading an article in a magazine on it. (She clues us in at the beginning of each chapter as to what her current obsession is and that is the focus of each chapter.) Her boyfriend, Julian, a hot rugby player, insists she doesn't need it. The other characters we meet are Sam, a boy who enjoys annoying her; Isabelle, her best friend who is beautiful but too short to be a model; Oscar, the new boy in school who has "potential" according to Isabelle; Maddie, who is goth and used to be friends with Alice; and James, a rugby player and Julian's best friend.
After an argument with Julian, which leaves Alice feeling insecure about her looks, her best friend Isabelle encourages her to enter a modeling competition. Alice didn't want to, but after more words with Julian, she decides to give it a shot. As she continues down this path, she makes new friends, learns who her true friends are, and gains a lot more confidence in herself.
I liked the growth in Alice as the book progressed. The majority of the story is told from her POV but about halfway through, we get the POV of some of the other characters. That seemed odd to me at first, but worked to help move the story along and helped us understand where the characters were coming from. At the beginning, she was coasting along and by the end, she's much more in charge of her life and stands up for herself more. I also liked the way her relationships with other characters developed and some of them turned out to be very different from what they first appeared to be.
I like some teenage drama now and then and this was a quick, fun book to read! This is based on a true story which you can read more about here. This book is a good reminder that even skinny girls and women suffer with body issues and it highlights what is actually important!
Content: A few swear words and a couple of instances of sexual innuendo.
I guess this is the part where I should tell you about my TV appearances, my books (“Help! My Teenager is a Alien” –Penguin and “The Teen Years don’t get mad get through it”) and my TV show that went around the world, the thousands of teens that I have helped and while I am proud of all that, I feel much more compelled to talk to you about cats and my kids – is that wrong?
I am a film addict, cake-loving, Disney-obsessed whirlwind (here one minute gone the next). I spend my day stalking teens, thinking about the future, stalking more teens, speaking, writing, coaching, and thinking about the future some more and getting geekily obsessed with new technology or a new breakthrough concept. All my life I have been different; my first job was at Disney World and my last as a police officer in the Met. My days are now spent making sure young people reach for “infinity and beyond”. I do this by speaking (sometimes in superhero outfits), modelling great shoes, coaching like a ninja and genuinely feeding cake to anyone who sits within reaching distance.
Unlike my mother, I do not have any impressive TV appearances or other novels behind me (apart from a never ending novel I wrote throughout my childhood--but let's not get into that), but I do have an impressive amount of sarcasm and wittiness to get me through any situation (including writing about myself, which I hate more than anything) and enough boots to suit any occasion. Therefore, I am catwalking into the lion's den that is the writing world with my shoulders back and head held high knowing that my characters and I are going to take on the world in a series of pink confetti explosions. There will also probably be a few cheesy songs to go with it.
First of all, you should know I am the worse excuse for an 18 year old you will ever come across. I have never been within a mile of a nightclub, in fact the wildest Saturday night I've ever had is staying up until 6 am watching films. I have no regrets. I glide through life looking like a fairy (as I've been told), creating new pinterest boards and consuming an awful lot of toast, something without even getting out of my Pyjamas!
1 comments:
Thank you so much for this, we really appreciate it :)
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