BELLES

I can't remember how I came across the Belles series. Might have been at the Panama City library. These are a trilogy of books by Jen Calonita, who's got quite a range of topics under her belt. I have several other books by her I need to read/review. 

I have started to get through this series twice now. It's honestly not that I don't enjoy the books. I've read the first two twice, but never made it through the third until today. I couldn't really tell you why. 

Belles is about two Southern girls from North Carolina. They're over on the coast, so I can't really speak of it, but I live in western NC right now and...it's not particularly Southern Belle-ish. I'm not sure why NC was picked as the setting because the two towns could really be anywhere along the southern East Coast.

I'm going to take a brief moment to talk about the covers, since I'm switching to writing beside the audiobook cover. 

These girls are supposed to be 15. They all look at the very least in their 20s. Sigh. Is it really hard to get cover models that are at least like 17 or something? 

Also, Isabelle "Izzie" Scott is undeniably the main character of all 3 of these books, yet she has no cover on the main versions. This woman on the audiobook I think is supposed to be her, but the covers of the actual books go to Mira (her cousin/sister), Savannah (the mean girl) and Charlotte (the new friend that only plays a bigger role in the 3rd book). 

Still not the best representations. Charlotte and Mira look right, but Savannah (the one on Winter White) is supposed to have brown eyes. Izzie, like Mira, has hazel, not the bright blue of the audiobook lady. 

Anyway. The first book is your typical Cinderella story. Izzie grew up in Harborside, raised by her grandmother after her mom dies in a car accident. It's a poorer town. When her grandmother's dementia gets too bad, she's placed in a nursing home while Izzie gets sent to Emerald Cove, a ritzy upperclass old money town, to live with her  newfound uncle and his family. The book is mostly about Izzie trying to fit in with everyone and how they all react to her. Mirabelle (IsaBELLE and MiraBELLE...BELLES) is her female cousin that's about the same age. Hayden is a little older and turns out to be the son of Mira's mom and her first husband, so he's not related to Izzie at all. And Connor, who's 6, rounds out the family. 

Izzie has drama with Savannah Ingram, the Emerald Prep queen bee, when it turns out Brayden, the guy Izzie surfed with over the summer, not only goes to Emerald Prep but is Savannah's boyfriend. Mira struggles through her own boy drama as well as finally seeing Savannah for who she really is. Hayden is the best character in this first book by a long shot. I like him a lot. Very down to earth and funny. 

As if all that wasn't enough to deal with, Izzie's uncle is running for state senator, so the entire family is under a constant microscope. Izzie has to deal with his campaign manager threatening her, which thankfully blows up in his face at the end. 

The big reveal is very predictable. The man Izzie thinks is her uncle is actually her father, though there was no scandal with him cheating on anyone. He never knew Izzie's mom was pregnant, so he didn't know Izzie existed until her grandmother contacted him before she declined too much. 

A lot of it is your typical teen drama YA stuff. Izzie ends up besting Savannah. She and Brayden end up together. Mira dumps her jock asshat boyfriend Taylor and wins the cute artsy boy that got her to realize she wanted to be an artist. 

The second book, Winter White, revolves around cotillion, the fancy schmancy female coming out ritual. Mira, finding herself with no friends after Savannah takes them all away, begs Izzie to do it with her. Izzie ends up enjoying the hazing part of it, because one of the older girls in charge clearly hates Savannah. 

Brayden's older sister Dylan is in town and Izzie sees a lot of herself in Dylan, but it turns out the girl is only there to cause trouble. There's a lot of drama with Brayden hiding things from Izzie, though Dylan helps them work things out in the end.

The girls find themselves in the spotlight in a bad way when photographers and a nasty reporter keep printing negative stories about them. The new aide their father found ends up being the culprit, paid off by Savannah's asshole father. My biggest problem with this book is that the aide gets away without much comeuppance and it turns out the jerk from the first book was involved, too. You'd think they could have their careers ruined or something satisfying, but no. Sigh. 

The third book opens with Izzie being depressed and not leaving her room for a month after her grandmother dies. The others finally get her back in the swing of things in time for her to help plan Founders Day (Izzie's big on philanthropy), bumping heads with Savannah all the way. 

Mira's found a new friend in Charlotte, a budding fashion designer, and the two take an art class together, where Mira meets a new hot boy to help her get over Kellan, her now ex-boyfriend who had to move away. 

Hayden is now seeing Kylie, Izzie's best friend from Harborside, and Izzie's not exactly thrilled about that. Kylie and Violet, one of Izzie's first friends at Emerald Prep, fight a lot. 

But the big drama is that we have yet another new family member reveal, which actually happened at the end of Winter White. It turns out Izzie's mom, Chloe, had a younger sister named Zoe. Zoe's a famous celebrity photographer and she's all of a sudden wanting back in everyone's lives. 

The series ends with everything getting mostly worked out. (Though Mira's new artsy boyfriend is the son of the nasty reporter that keeps going after the family.) Everyone makes up. Details of the past are revealed. Izzie gets closure with her grandmother after reading a letter from her that was in her safety deposit box. Mira and Izzie share a Sweet Sixteen party and the girls are closer than ever. So it wrapped up nicely, but I did enjoy the books a lot, so I wanted more. I would have liked Violet on the cover of the next one. She and Charlotte were probably my two favorites. 

If you like rich girl YA stuff, check these out. They've got more meat and less brand-dropping than Gossip Girl and the like.