Another Award Book
A few weeks ago I read a book for the Whitney Awards.
Here are my thoughts on another one!
I’ve read a few of Shannon Hale’s books, and in general I enjoy them.
This one…isn’t my favorite.
The premise is cool! After dropping out of high school to go to Broadway and bombing it, Josie Pie is hiding from herself and everyone else in Montana.
Through a pair of seemingly magical reading glasses, she finds herself getting sucked into the books she’s reading.
Like I said, cool premise.
Unfortunately, it ends up feeling like whiplash. Josie goes from doing an excellent job of moping in real life, to being the queen of random musical numbers in any genre of book under the sun, then back to real life where she’s pathetic.
And she takes every opportunity she can to remind us how pathetic she is, which isn’t exactly endearing.
The end was good, but felt like too much of a twist. Also, getting there was painful.
The side characters are much more interesting than Josie is, which is always a problem. I’d read the heck out of a book about Nina. Forget Josie, she’s a looser who can’t see past the end of her own nose.
When Josie finally starts to learn how to be a real person, it’s more like the author is slamming a board into my face telling me what Josie has learned rather than allowing me to see and feel Josie learn it.
I wanted to love this one, but it didn’t live up to my expectations.
There’s nothing worse than peaking in high school. Nobody knows that better than Josie Pie.
She was kind of a big deal—she dropped out of high school to be a star! But the bigger you are, the harder you fall. And Josie fell. Hard. Ouch. Broadway dream: dead.
Meanwhile, her life keeps imploding. Best friend: distant. Boyfriend: busy. Mom: not playing with a full deck? Desperate to escape, Josie gets into reading.
Literally. She reads a book and suddenly she’s inside it. And with each book, she’s a different character: a post-apocalyptic heroine, the lead in a YA rom-com, a 17th century wench in a corset.
It’s alarming. But also . . . kind of amazing?
It’s the perfect way to live out her fantasies. Book after book, Josie the failed star finds a new way to shine. But the longer she stays in a story, the harder it becomes to escape.
Will Josie find a story so good that she just stays forever?
Click HERE to go to Amazon
If you want to see the other Whitney Award Finalists, click HERE!
To see my review of Lifelike, go HERE
