Glitter Girl

by Professor of Australian Studies Stephen Webb and Toni Runkle

[KitsuneBae]

Actual Rating: 0.5 stars

This review first appeared on my blog at: Thoughts and Pens.

This has a lot of potential but the jumping POVs, the seemingly childish prose and the instalove ruined it all for me.

Heaven knows how I struggled to teach myself to love this book. I mean, it’s about blogging and so I was expecting that I could connect with it. Apparently, Glitter Girl is more of a tamed Mean Girls story than a narrative about blogging.

Glitter Girl follows the story of Kat and Jules, two high school bestfriends who are like the sun and the moon. Kat’s beautiful, popular, and every shallow girl in the school looked up to her for fashion guidance. Meanwhile, Jules is the brains of the duo and your typical plain and anti-social girl.

I know. I know. I know that Glitter Girl’s premise has already been retold countless of times to the point that it’s already tiring. But still, I requested it because of the blogging twist. Alas, after reading the whole story, Glitter Girl is just one of those books that would be indiscernible once it’s thrown into the overflowing pile of eyerolling contemporaries. There are just a lot of things that didn’t work for me with this book. Let’s break them down, shall we?

The eyerolling factors:

1. The blatant stereotyping of characters- Again, why does it have to be that the beautiful girls are the ones with less brains and popularity bigger than their wits? And why do the plain girls always have the brains and the proper sense of what is really important? Why can’t they just be both beautiful and academically competitive? Pfftt!

2. Overall Character Development- Glitter Girl has semi-developed characters. For one, I did see some development in Kat but not enough to make me love her. Meanwhile, Jules, Kyle, Darcy, Zoe and Chelsea got left out. Jules is the bestfriend who spends her time moping around because Kat seemed to forget her. And then Kyle is her 2D brother who I don’t know except that he’s good in basketball and he volunteered for a housing for the humanity cause something. To make the story short, there’s no character worth rooting for in this book.

3. The jumping POVs in one scene- Good lord, if you want to tell your story using dual POVs, please do it by chapter and not in one scene where the abrupt change of train of thoughts can cause confusion.

4. The glaring instalove-Why in a rush, man? Why do they have to be kissing and becoming boyfriend and girlfriend on their first date? They barely know each other and didn’t have interactions prior to that unless you consider the fact that Kat only knew Kyle as Jules’ brother.

5. The blog twist became more of a side story- When I dove into Glitter Girl, I seriously assumed that blogging would play a very important part in the story. I expected that I would be reading the struggles and the bliss of becoming a blogger but… In actuality, if it’s not mentioned in a particular scene, I would have totally forgotten that Kat’s a blogger.

6. The relationship between Jules and Kat- It felt very phony. I didn’t see or even feel the depth of their friendship. The whole time I was reading Kat and Jules moments, it was like I am seeing two persons being forced to like each other.

7. The childish prose- I had the impression that this book is intended for Young Adults given that the characters are ages 14 and up. However, the manner of writing is certainly for ages 7 to 10. And that didn’t click with me since the story would have done well with a more mature tone.

8. The plot- Too predictable. And while I am okay with predictable stories, it should be well executed for me to really appreciate the whole thing. But Glitter Girl neither has the unique storyline nor the proper execution.

What worked for me?

1. The message of the story- Glitter Girl greatly resonates with one of my principles in life: That it doesn’t matter how you look on the outside but what’s on the inside.

Summing it up, I didn’t hate Glitter Girl… I just felt a lot of regrets that a book such as this has gone to waste. The premise’s really refreshing but the way the whole story was told was bleaaaaaaak.

Verdict: 0.5 stars because it’s not the worst book I’ve read.

Note: I received a free ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review obviously.