CHLOE BY DESIGN: Making the Cut (Books 1-4)

I adore a good thrift store find. The colorful spines of this book and the other one I bought from the same series caught my eye in Goodwill today. I learned that they're volumes 1 and 3 with no 2 in sight, but I got them anyway. And promptly ordered 2 off Amazon after reading a single chapter.

Now you wouldn't think an eldergoth (Yeah, there's even a term for us older goths that have been part of the scene for eons.) like me would enjoy Project Runway, but I DO. I don't watch it religiously, but I love seeing the designs people come up with. I used to draw a lot of my story characters and designing their clothing was super fun, but that's where my fashion design ability ends. I can't sew for shit.

Anyway! Making the Cut is about 16-year-old Chloe, who's in a teen fashion design competition a la Project Runway. The book is chock full of cool fashion art, which I love, so it was an easy decision to purchase it.

When I got home and looked the series up on Amazon, I was immediately confused, because I was seeing a LOT of different titles. Making the Cut is over an inch thick, so I was kind of amazed that there was that much to write about a teen in the fashion design world. Then I read some of the blurbs in the listings and realized they sounded like the book I had.

It turns out Making the Cut is a compilation of the first four books in the series. I'm adding their covers here so you can see them, but if you're interested in the series, buy the three compilation volumes. The individual ones are really overpriced because a lot of them only came in library binding.

I'm going to talk about them by their individual names to make things a bit easier.

I do have to guess where each book ends and the new one begins though, because they're not divided up in the compilation, nor is there a number of chapters divisible by four to make things easier for me.

Design Diva is the first book. You get to meet Chloe, her not at all into fashion best friend Alexis (Alex), her parents, her rival Nina, and Mimi, the lady who runs the fabric/thrift store.

Chloe spends the first book not being sure of herself, but then getting her shit together and making the three outfits needed for the first audition. Nina, who's been stealing her ideas since they were kids, is her competition. Naturally, both girls make it past the first round of auditions.

I'm really not sure where the break between 1 and 2 is. The 9th chapter ends at a good point, but the Amazon listing for Design Diva says it's 96 pages, so that would include the 10th chapter. The 10th chapter also starts immediately after the 9th. Like obviously it does, but 9 ends with "And I know I'll be ready" and 10 starts with "Did I say ready?" Like they really flow together. But there is no other place to have the book break that makes any sense, so I'm going to say it's there.

Gah, this really doesn't matter, but I'm anal.

So the second book is The First Cut. Chloe's past the first audition and now has to enhance one of her three looks with an accessory. She gets inspiration at an art fair and meets her very, very casual love interest, Jake. Then she has to design a rodeo-inspired look for the final audition. She meets Jake's mother at that audition and she turns out to be one of the past winners of the regular Design Diva show. Chloe makes it into the real televised competition...but so does her rival, Nina.

In Unraveling, the third book, Chloe is now in New York City and the competition is under way. This one clearly starts at chapter 20 of the compilation. Here's where I started getting a bit frustrated, because the short format of the books doesn't give New York enough screentime and it doesn't give the characters enough screentime. It's pretty much just the competition with a couple extra scenes thrown in, but it could have been so much better! Chloe struggles at first, but then scores some wins.

Design Destiny is the fourth book and I cannot freakin' tell where it starts in the compilation. My guess is chapter 33. But it doesn't matter. There's no break in the narrative. The third and fourth books are solidly about the competition. As contestants are eliminated and the challenges get harder, each contestant receives a mentor from one of the past seasons of the adult version of the show. Who does Chloe get? Jake's mom, Liesel, who she already met. It sounds like Liesel asked for her, which I'm not sure would have been allowed in an actual reality show. Chloe's rivalry with Nina comes to a head, because Nina's mentor is a woman who sabotaged her fellow contestants on her season and is now getting Nina to do the same thing. In a completely unrealistic plot twist, Chloe watches an episode of the show while on the phone with her best friend Alex, and sees that Nina really did sabotage her in one challenge and the cameras have caught her plotting with her mentor. Nina mentions how she gave Chloe an ugly necklace before the main televised competition in the hopes that she'd use it and get eliminated. Chloe ends up using it as a belt on her final look...and wins. Of course she does. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to watch the show you're on though. I feel like that's against the rules.

Silly things like that aside, this is a really fun series. Sometimes it gets a bit too fashion-detaily for someone like me who doesn't know much about sewing, but overall, I enjoyed it enough to zip through the entire compilation and now I'm stuck waiting for the second volume to arrive so I can read it and the third. There are 12 books total with 3 compilations that are the most affordable way to check them out.

I'll be back next week with reviews for the rest!

24 Hours in Ancient Rome

I actually came on here to do a completely different review, saw my last one for 24 Hours in Ancient Egypt, and realized I never did one for the Rome version.

Remember how I complained about the terrible lack of editing and the constant repetition in the Egypt book?

Not an issue here.

This author, who is a different person, doesn't constantly say "a couple of."

The chapters were even better tied together than the Egyptian ones. Quite impressively so. And the use of original source material was fabulous.

My only criticism of the book is that sometimes it gets a little textbooky and takes you out of the "day in the life" sense. While very informative, some of the chapters had so much factual detail that you forgot who the character was that you were supposed to be following along through that hour of the day. But that's a very minor criticism in comparison with what I had to say about the Egyptian book!

I am pleased to conclude that this same author will be tackling 24 Hours in Ancient Athens, which is the next book in this delightful series, due out on August 1st.