Bookanistas Review: SPOILED

mood: smiley
pandora/ipod: "animal" by neon trees

SPOILED by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan (aka The Fug Girls)

From Goodreads:

16-year-old Molly Dix loves her ordinary life in suburban Indiana, so when her single mother passes away, she is shocked to discover that her biological father is Brick Berlin, world famous movie star and red carpet regular.

Equally intrigued and terrified by her Hollywood lineage, Molly moves to Southern California and plunges head-first into the deep end of Beverly Hills celebrity life. Just as Molly thinks her new life and family couldn't get any stranger, she meets Brooke Berlin, her gorgeous and spoiled half-sister whom welcomes Molly to la-la land with a healthy dose of passive-aggressive "sisterly love."

Set against the backdrop of a sparkling and fashion-filled Los Angeles, this deliciously dysfunctional family soap opera will satisfy every reader looking for their next lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous beach read.

Let me start off, in the spirit of full disclosure, by saying that Jessica and I go way back. Way back. Way, way back. The kind of way back *cough*freshmen year of college*cough* that knows where the bodies are buried...

That said, even if I didn't know Jessica personally, the international success of her and Heather's celebrity fashion blog Go Fug Yourself, a snarkilicious guilty pleasure of over four million readers a month, plus the Fug Girls' front row presence at every fashion week from New York to Paris would make this novel a must read for me. I expected glamor and parody and wit and angst all wrapped up in a sushi roll of celebrity encounters and A-list locales.

And the girls knocked it out of the park.

Now SPOILED could very easily have been just another entry in the Clueless-slash-Mean Girls-meets-Princess Diaries genre and on the surface that's what it seems: after her mother's death, unassuming, Midwestern every girl Molly discovers her biological father is the hottest action star in Hollywood and moves out to live in his mansion with the half-sister she never knew existed, the rich, popular (and bitterly resentful of Molly) Brooke. And I would have been perfectly okay with that trope, people. Trust me, there's a reason Cinderella stories work. But SPOILED is actually so much more than that, it caught me off guard.

First off, the book isn't told from Molly's point-of-view, but instead alternates between Brooke and Molly, giving us insight into both sisters. Secondly - and perhaps the most disarming thing of all - I'm not entirely sure Molly is the heroine of this novel Because for me, the character I loved most... was Brooke.

I know, right? The spoiled mean girl? The privileged celebutante? ME?

Yep. Absolutely. 100%. And here's why - Jessica and Heather have humanized Brooke so much that despite some of the heartless, back-biting crap she pulls in the book, I couldn't help but root for her.

I fell in love with Brooke right from the get-go: we learn in the first scene how Brooke has been abandoned by both of her parents - the one she lives with AND the one she doesn't. Suddenly all of her passive-agressive actions are justified. Er, well, most of them. And I found myself loving Brooke's narrative despite myself.

Yes, I'm dramatic like that. Sue me.

SPOILED has been described as "the perfect beach read" and while I personally don't see that as a slight, I think it does the book a disservice. It's so much more than a bit of fluff, so much deeper (albeit obscured under a delightful layer of name-dropping snark and modern LA pop references) than your average YA chick lit that I found myself thinking about these characters well after I read the last page.

Oh yes. Sidenote. In a book filled with fake movie and TV show titles, I must say that Tequila Mockingbird might be the best fake title ever thought up. Ever. In the history of the freaking world.

Seriously.

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