Vanity

by Lucy Lord

[Leah]

Last year I read and enjoyed Revelry by Lucy lord. It wasn’t perfect but it was an escapist read and for the most part I liked it so when I saw the second book was out in January for the bargain price of 99p I pre-ordered it immediately, for 99p you can’t really go wrong, can you? Well, as it turns out, you can. Because Vanity was absolutely, utterly nothing like Revelry and, worse, it wasn’t even better for it.

For me though Vanity was a poor sister to Revelry. The writing style did a 360 degree turn and there were just way too many stories and characters to follow. Everything was to excess. Every single character took drugs and got drunk and slept with whomever they fancied. It was borderline obscene. It seemed to say that the only way to have fun was to be drugged up. I’m not saying there should have been zero drug use but it didn’t have to be the driving force of the novel. Lord was incapable of writing a drug free scene and it was that noticeable. I wouldn’t even know where to buy drugs, but they seemed to be available on tap to whomever wanted them in Vanity and it was all too much.

Even the characters were different. Poppy was her usual self – entirely full of herself, in fact – but that actually works for Poppy, and I felt we didn’t actually see enough of her in Vanity. The novel was too focused on everybody else, when as far as I’m aware, the novels are meant to be about Bella and Poppy. Bella was just not the same at all. She’s in a relationship now, has succumbed to coupledom with Andy, and it just felt weird. I thought Bella was a stronger person than to have to ask someone else if she’s allowed to do something. Even the horrible Ben turned out to not be so horrible – how terribly convenient and Chick Lit! It all seemed so forced. Even Sam, who I felt was a welcome addition, was stero-typical.

The novel was full of itself. Everyone was self-congratulatory and it was a waste of my time. That probably sounds really harsh, and I don’t mean to sound so harsh, but I just don’t get it. I don’t understand how characters can change so much in a matter of months, of how Lucy Lord thought it would be an EXCELLENT idea to switch the writing from first-person (which worked) to third-person (which so badly didn’t, what with all the shoe-horned in new characters and plots and things to follow). It was off-kilter in third-person, there was just too much going on. It’s like she tried to fit a trilogy in just one book. It’s quite ridiculous, and it got to the point where I just didn’t care about these people any more, they’d become caricatures of themselves. I was disappointed, and I will take a long hard think before I decide if I read Treachery.