Alterations

by Stephanie Scott

[Leah]

Alterations is one of those books that is so sweet, you feel like you should have a tooth-ache. I’m not even kidding! It’s also a re-telling of Sabrina, which got my excited for about a second until I realised it was Sabrina the movie, with Audrey Hepburn, and not Sabrina the Teenage Witch, my favourite show as a kid (with Kenan and Kel a very, very close second). I’ve never seen Sabrina (the movie) but I had a look at Wikipedia and got the jist and, yes, this seems to be similar. And I think anyone who has seen the film will definitely lap it up. Because it is, genuinely, such a cute little novel.

I loved Amelia! Honestly, she was adorable and huge props to her for leaving Miami to head to New York to go to NYFI, damn that’s brave. And I loved how passionate she was about clothes. I am no fashionista – I live in either pjs, my work uniform or jogging clothes. I LIKE clothes, and I aspire to dress better, but by God, it’s so much freaking effort, man! But Amelia! She changes clothes to her liking, makes clothes from scratch, and it was so inspiring. I genuinely wanted to make her make me a scarf, please and thank you, and possibly take me shopping??? It was great to see that when she comes back from New York, she’s thinking a bit different – her obsession with Ethan Laurenti was bizarre, fantastical, so to see her try and move on, with varying success, was interesting. Helping out Ethan’s twin brother Liam with a project was equally fantastic.

Alterations was such a quick, cute read. Yes, I keep saying cute a lot. But it was, and perhaps my only issue was the whole “help” thing, ugh. It’s 2016 for God’s sake, and it hurt my soul that Amelia felt weird whenever she was in the Laurenti house or when Liam came to their house, it just rubbed me up the wrong way. Apart from that, it was adorable. I loved Amelia, Liam was amazing (talk about the under-rated brother), Amelia’s friends Maya, Des, Amy, were all great and the bizarre-o scenario where Amelia ends up being a stylist to a girl named Haylo (with a Y, and all her siblings had an extra Y in their names, too, which was just mind-blowing) was pretty sweet. Any budding fashionista will lap this book up, it’s filled with fashion-y goodness.