Girl Stuff

Lisi Harrison is back. 

I have a love/hate relationship with Lisi. Well, maybe not hate. Love/disappointment? Something like that.

Lisi is most known for The Clique, a middle grade series that lasted from 2004-2011, which was pretty long for that type of series back then. It was the heyday of Gossip Girl (though I always preferred its spinoff, The It Girl) and The Clique was basically a middle grade version of that with less adulty things but an equal amount of brand name-dropping. It was a bunch of rich kid drama with a few not so rich characters thrown into the mix. Lisi is impressive in that she's gifted at making up her own slang for her books. She does it quite realistically because it helps her characters feel real, even though it's not exactly the most intelligent-sounding slang ever. But to this day, I will still occasionally dub something "ah-mazing" and that is all Lisi. 

The Alphas series was a spinoff of The Clique, and then Lisi got her hands on Monster High, which is where my disappointment came in. MH was now infused with unrecognizable versions of Frankie, Draculaura (called Lala...fucking really?) and Clawdeen, as well as a forced-in Mary Sue character named Melody. The monsters were attending a normie high school and there was this whole hiding amongst the humans nonsense that made no sense in conjunction with the actual Monster High. I still don't understand why she crafted something so different from what MH was when the existing premise was just fine. So that was the beginning of my disappointment, followed by her Pretenders series, which was more the most adult end of young adult and never even finished. 

So honestly, I haven't even thought of her in many years. The second Pretenders book came out in 2014 and she's been out of my head since then basically. Cue my surprise when a book called Girl Stuff showed up in my suggesteds and...it's by Lisi. (As well as an even newer book called The Pack, which has middle school girls with animal powers. I just ordered it. I might even give the old MH books a rebuy and reread, since it's been so long and I'm less WTF about her changing things up. Oh, I'm still WTF, but less so.) 

I received Girl Stuff today and blasted through it and I loved it. It's the old Clique Lisi but even better because there's not a ton of rich girl brand name bull. These feel way more like real, accessible girls. There's an amusing clique called the Avas, because they're all named Ava, but they're not really mean girls. They're actually pretty nice. Just that shallow brand of popular. The premise is that there are three best friends who are going into seventh grade together. They're "nesties," neighbor besties, but they've never been in the same school before. So each one goes into the school year with her own big plan, only to of course have everything go wonky. 

Fonda is the middle girl on the cover. She's the youngest of 3 sisters and she's always been left behind, which definitely happens to kids with popular older siblings. So her goal is to make her clique the popular ones, but they're going to still be kind people, not mean. 

Drew, the blonde skatergirl, has one goal: to get her crush to like her back. She's a very individualistic type. Think Dawn Schafer but into skateboarding and nursing instead of saving the world.

And Ruthie, who was my fave, is basically a genius. I love how smart she is. Her big thing is adjusting to being put in the advanced placement group, which somehow happens with no warning. Not believable considering how absolutely intensive this program is. She doesn't even get lunch or some weekends with Fonda and Drew. 

The book follows the girls as they navigate through their friendship ups and downs. It's pretty predictable and not the most unique thing ever (like at all), but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. I've only had the one short book and I already like the characters more than the ones in The Friendship List, which I'm also reading. So I'm now looking forward to the second one, which comes out in late September, two days before my birthday.

The Final Girl Support Group

Man, this thing was a wild ride. I got it earlier today and read it almost all in one go, only taking a short break for dinner. 

The premise is pretty simple. The slasher movies in this reality are based on true stories and the final girls of those stories are real people. It's decades later for most of them, so we're not talking teenage girls anymore, but older women. Six of them meet for a support therapy group, but right away, bad things start happening and it becomes clear that someone is after the final girls. 

This worked really well because the protagonist definitely felt like a final girl. Final girls aren't infallible. They make a shitload of mistakes and our main character does just that. She's not entirely likeable, but not one of these characters is. They're not unlikeable, but if you need an endearing cast to read a book, you're not going to find that here.

I loved the fast pace and the constant changes, plus the world-building with the parodies of actual slasher franchises. Like there are their own versions of Jason and Freddy and Leatherface. My biggest problem is the ambiguity regarding the "Dream King," which is the Nightmare on Elm Street parody. It feels like there's a lot more story there and it's never explained what exactly happened to that character in the past. It's the one that has more of a supernatural element to it and it doesn't quite fit in with the reality of the rest of the book, especially one scene at the end. But that's a fairly minor nitpick. 

If you like horror at all, I highly recommend checking this out. I'd call it a thriller novel, not horror, but the plot's basis is from horror movies, so there's crossover.

Disney's Twisted Tales: Mirror, Mirror

Jen Calonita is added to the line-up of authors reworking these twisted versions of Disney movies. She's written this one, based on Snow White, and the next book in the series, which is based on Frozen. 

This is the weakest of the series so far, because it barely changes the story. It makes the queen a little more evil, because she kills Snow White's mother, who is the Evil Queen's younger sister. She banishes Snow's father and tells the people he abandoned them and his daughter. Then it goes right into the regular plot: Snow is a threat to her beauty and her crown so she has the huntsman kill her, but he can't and she finds the dwarves. The biggest difference here is what happens after because Snow is determined to take back her kingdom, instead of singing and playing house. The prince finds her and takes her to her father, who says he physically can't return to the kingdom because of the Evil Queen's curse. So it's up to the prince and the dwarves to team up with Snow and get the local villagers to help rise up against the queen. 

It is nice to see Snow and the prince spend more time together and more realistically develop feelings for each other. Then near the end comes the cover twist, which is the prince getting the poisoned apple, but he's poisoned for, like, a couple hours before Snow kisses him and breaks the spell. 

It was an enjoyable book, but not nearly as good as the others. It's only lightly twisted and even more lightly dark. Snow can't even kill the queen. She just sticks her in the dungeon after destroying the mirror after a bunch of simpering instances of her thinking about how she could never kill anyone. She's a witch who killed your mother, banished your father, neglected you and then tried to kill you repeatedly. Just fucking kill her. Sheesh. 

I'd say read this one is you're a bit of a completist like me who wants to read the whole series, but if you're just picking and choosing from this series, skip it.

Disney's Twisted Tales: Part of Your World

Continuing on with Twisted Disney, we come to The Little Mermaid. 

I had really mixed feelings about this one at first, because why would Ursula stay in disguise as Vanessa and be content with manipulating humans when she could just rule Atlantica? I was further dismayed to see them using the canon from the 3rd Little Mermaid movie when it came to her sisters. 

This drives me insane. The original movie CLEARLY spells out the age order of the sisters. IT IS LITERALLY IN A SONG. 

Aquata. 

Andrina. 

Arista.

Attina. 

Adella.

Alana.

Ariel. 

That is the correct order. I will accept nothing otherwise. The old chapter book series sticks by that. 

I was bitterly disappointed that the author didn't use the rather blank slates of the sisters to create characters for them, but she wrote them off as forcing Ariel to rule as punishment for the death of Triton while they spent their time on frivolity. It's hinted later that this frivolity is how their grieve their mother, but as Ariel points out, that was over a hundred years ago.  

Yeah, I have no idea how mermaids age. Ariel was 16, yet her mother died 100+ years ago, so one mer year is many, many human years. It's been 5 or 6 years since Ursula defeated Triton, so figure Ariel is 21 or 22, but actually well over 100. 

Anyway, Scuttle is still alive and does some spying on Vanessa. He realizes she's still got King Triton alive in polyp form, so he quickly gets the news to Ariel, who as I mentioned is Queen of the Seas. Ariel is still mute but communicates in sign language, using an old signed form of the mer language. 

Ariel goes to the castle to try to find her father, able to become human thanks to the power of the trident. And yes, there's some bitterness that her father could have made her human all along. 

So thus begins the adventure. Ariel is aided on land by Scuttle, but as he's quite old, it's mostly his great grandgull Jona that's helping. Ariel ends up stealing the nautilus necklace while Vanessa is bathing and gets her voice back pretty early on, but this also alerts Vanessa that Ariel is there and it frees Eric from the spell she's had on him (and the entire town) for years. Eric and Ariel team up and rekindle old feelings while working together to find King Triton and stop Vanessa, who's amusing herself by trying to cause a bunch of wars. 

And...get this...Ursula's big final plan is to cast a spell that summons the Elder Gods, who will give her power on land, as she has none. (Likewise, the trident doesn't work on land.) It even uses a twisted Lovecraftian language. 

Yep. Ursula's gonna summon Cthulhu. Classic.

I started out disliking this, but ended up enjoying it quite a lot. Attina in the role of the oldest sister shows up the most of the other 6 and is the only one to really get a personality. She's snarky and sounds a bit silly compared to the well-read Attina that's my favorite, but she ended up being a decent character. I still swap her with Aquata in my head though. As it should be. All the old favorites are there: Sebastian, Scuttle, Flounder, Carlotta the maid, Grimsby, Max. And they're joined by Jona, a badass older woman tattoo artist named Argent, and Vareet, Vanessa's young servant girl. It's a pretty fun ride and all the questions you have at the beginning do get answered by the end.

Disney's Twisted Tales: Reflection

I let myself fall behind on these again. I'm honestly not sure why it took me three attempts to finally finish this book. This is a good series, but I'm constantly pulled away from it by other things. 

But I'm taking a break from historical reading, so it's a good time to work through my backlog of Twisted Disney. 

Reflection is obviously based on Mulan. I would say this one was far less dark than the previous three installments. It's my favorite so far though. 

Basically, Li Shang is injured protecting Mulan from Shan Yu after she fires the cannon that causes the avalanche. Shang's father visits as a ghost and tells "Ping" he can help save Shang by travelling to Diyu, the underworld. 

So aided by the Li family guardian, a stone lion named ShiShi, Mulan is off on a perilous journey through the underworld. ShiShi is an entertaining character who provides some moments of levity, though not like Cri-Kee or Mushu. He's a better fit for the story because Mulan's actual guardians would have been a bit too comic. ShiShi has range. 

The story follows Mulan, Shang and ShiShi as they battle demons, ghosts and an enchantress, who are all out to stop them from making it out of Diyu before sunrise. It's a great adventure tale with a lot of introspective moments and character development. There are some parallels to the movie, but they're minimal. Though Shang does still say "You fight good." Excellent. 

CHLOE BY DESIGN: Balancing Act (Books 5-8)

So over 2 years ago, I found two of these books at Goodwill, ripped through the first one, bought the missing middle volume, and then promptly never finished the series. I picked up the first volume, which contains 4 books, and zipped through it yesterday, then started the second volume. I finished that tonight and I've started the third, so I will finally finish this series!

Chloe by Design is a series of 12 books, but they're most easily bought in the 3 bind-up editions, which contain 4 books each. 

The cover to the left here is the second bind-up, containing books 5-8. 

As I did the first time, I'm going to show the covers for the individual books, though this time I'm not going to try to match them up to how the bind-up is broken up. 

So when we first met Chloe from Santa Cruz, CA, she was a contestant on a teen version of Design Diva (Project Runway). The first four books got her through the three auditions to New York City and then through the entire competition. I thought the competition part went a little quickly. Can't remember if I mentioned that in my first review or not, but it definitely felt that way this second read through. 

 

So now Chloe finds herself interning for a designer in New York City, which was her prize for winning the competition. She's living in a dorm at FIT, alongside other interns. Two are definitely in college. I can't remember how old the mean girl one is. But yeah, one is a mean girl who never gets to like Chloe because she feels she didn't earn her way to the internship. Reality TV may be silly, but some of the competition shows are no doubt competitions. Chloe definitely earned her prize. 

Most of the book is about Chloe's adventures in interning. 

She's in a different department for each 2 weeks of her 2-month internship. She starts out with Laura in knits and denims. Laura wasn't my favorite. She's clearly unorganized and I just didn't really like her. Chloe's one big mistake during her internship is something I still can't understand. She was doing her second internship at the time, with Taylor in dresses, but also doing 2 days a week still with Laura, who's basically such a mess that she needs an intern more than Taylor. Chloe is tasked with doing something with designing jackets, which are supposed to pair with the dresses she worked on with Taylor. So she uses designs she did for Taylor and Laura gets upset and says she cut corners. Yes, she used the work she did for Taylor...but aren't the jackets supposed to go with those dresses? I read this part over a few times and still have no idea what she did wrong. So that's why I don't like Laura much. Taylor is uptight and can be cold, but I liked her better. 

Chloe's third two weeks are with Michael in PR and then the same two days with Laura still. This had some way more interesting tasks and I liked it the best of the internship divisions. 

The majority of the book really is serious details about interning, which is pretty cool, because it has Chloe mostly choosing her internship over Jake, her friend-possibly-boyfriend from the first books. She also never stoops to any sort of bad level with Madison the mean girl, who digs her own grave during Fashion Week. 

Chloe is a likeable yet sometimes frustrating character. There's a scene where she's more interested in texts from Jake than listening to Michael and I wanted to smack her, especially because most of the department heads just give instructions and then leave the interns to it. She could have easily gotten her assignment then checked her phone when she was alone. Stupid. 

Chloe's BFF, Alex, from California visits during Fashion Week and ends up helping Chloe with the show, as the designer is happy for another volunteer. Not sure how realistic that is because Alex has zero experience, but I like her so whatever. In the two months Chloe has been gone, Alex suddenly cares about fashion and now has a boyfriend, both of which Chloe is happy about. 

Everything goes smoothly. Chloe is asked back for next summer and she's adjusted well to New York. She's made friends with the older interns and the mean one got herself in trouble so she won't be interning again. Chloe stays friends with Jake, even through some ups and downs, and they decide she's just plain too busy to balance him along with everything else. Very mature decision. I didn't find this one as fun or interesting as the competition one, but that's because it was more loaded with fashion details and less with fun places and challenges. It was still fun though.

Some Girls Are

Right to the point: Don't waste your time on this one. 

This is along the veins of Mean Girls only way worse. 

Regina is the main character. Yes, Regina. Ha. But not that Regina. She's the right hand woman to the school's mean queen bee, Anna. Regina fully admits they're the type of popular that parents fear. They're feared more than liked and that's how Anna wants it. 

The story opens at a party where everyone is drunk or drugged up or both. Regina, designated driver, goes looking for Anna to drive her home. She finds her passed out while Anna's boyfriend Donnie decides it's a great idea to try to rape Regina. Regina fights him off and flees the party, finding herself in front of Kara's house. Kara is a member of their clique so Regina goes in and tells her what happened. Kara's advice is to not tell Anna because Anna is the type of friend that will think Regina is after Donnie as opposed to believing her best friend was almost raped. 

Turns out Regina made the biggest mistake of the entire book by confiding in Kara. Kara hates Regina and Regina hates Kara. So why tell her? You're the type of mean girl who knows what's going to happen, but you do it anyway, Regina. Good job. 

Kara spins the incident in her favor and Regina is frozen out of the friend group, which leads to the entire book-long battle between Regina and her old clique. Regina is forced to sit with class outcast Michael, who's actually hot but when he had no interest in hanging out with the popular crew, they started rumors that he was borderline a school shooter and pretty much ruined his life, which became even more ruined after his mother was killed in a bridge collapse. 

Regina and Michael predictably end up together after he forgives her. Way too easily. Michael is the most likeable character in the book, but he's also stupid. Stupid to forgive a bully just because she's being bullied and stupid to carry his journal around school when he's written things in it that could be used against him. 

The only other likeable character is Liz, who used to be part of the popular group until Anna thought Liz and Regina were getting too close and forced Regina and the others to freeze her out. But Liz, unlike Michael, never forgives Regina. 

So you're expecting Mean Girl-type pranks, right? No. It begins with WHORE spray-painted on Regina's locker and a Facebook page called I Hate Regina Afton being created, but there are loads of actual physical altercations. Between the guys (predictable) AND the girls. Kara pushes Regina down the stairs. Regina does the same to Kara later on. The two constantly attack each other, slamming each other into lockers. It's Kara that's the true bitch, not Anna, who just sits back and watches mostly. But they're both equally bad in my opinion because of what they do with Regina's rape story. Kara uses it to her advantage, while Anna doesn't believe it, preferring to think her best friend fucked her boyfriend. 

The book culminates in Regina telling everyone in the school every dirty secret on her ex-friends that she has, which leads to Anna photocopying Michael's journal, including the page where he says he wants to kill everyone. See, he's stupid. Regina is also stupid enough to get in a car with these bitches and they drive her outside of town to kick her ass and leave her to walk home without her shoes. Anna punches her once then is a princess about it, but Kara unleashes on her. When she gets to school, Liz's friend sees her in the bathroom and goes to get Liz. Liz doesn't really want to help, having spent ages being tortured by Regina and company, but she "wanted to see it." However, when Regina tells her what Anna has on Michael, Liz goes to Anna and threatens to tell the principal what she heard two of the bitches saying about the fight in the bathroom. Anna gives Liz the photocopied pages, Regina ends up with Michael, Anna and Kara get absolutely zero comeuppance really. 

Regina is an annoying character because she is mostly cowardly. She goes to Michael's mom, a psychiatrist while she's alive, because the Liz incident made her unable to eat. She still doesn't eat much, chowing down antacid like it's candy. She's clearly wracked with guilt but it doesn't help you like her any more. She believes she deserves what she gets and aside from the attempted rape, she really does. So do the other girls and guys taken down throughout the book. 

I raised this point with a different book, but it is even more apparent here. The adults are NOWHERE in this story. Regina's parents are presented as useless and she tells them almost nothing. The principal is a threat and other teachers appear to hand out simple punishments for simple things, but how in the hell aren't there repercussions for all the fights? This book is completely unrealistic because so many of these incidents are so public that there's no way they'd fall under adult radar. 

So unrealistic story plus unlikeable characters equals I wasted my time with this.