Bright Young Things by Anna Godbersen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was so excited to begin reading this book. It was a return to my guilty pleasure; YA fiction which was a nice change from all of the classics I’ve been reading.
Unfortunately, Bright Young Things is written in the new YA style, that is the bad style or as I like to call it the “Stephanie Meyer style”. It is quite sad these days to go to the bookstore and check out the YA shelf to find that most of the new titles are about vampires and guardian angels and werewolves and everything supernatural. I yearn for the days of coming of age titles where there was no mystery or murder and no one had any super powers. I blame Twilight for this! Curse you Stephanie Meyer!
Fortunately for me, Bright Young Things didn’t include too many Topaz eyes or irresistible scents and had something that resembled a plot so I was able to finish it and not feel like I had wasted my time.
Bright Young Things is set in 1929 and is the story of Cordelia and Letty who have run away from hicksville (Union, Ohio) to the Big smoke (Manhattan) to become famous! For me, everything falls into place far to easily. The girls barely have to try to get settled even though they had never seen anything like Manhattan before.
For me, Cordelia’s chapters are the hardest too take. I really couldn’t stand the character or the decisions she made and I found myself wishing for a Letty or Astrid bit with every new paragraph. I was really cheering on Letty though and hoping everything would work out for her.
I loved the setting. 1920’s America has always held a bit of a fascination for me and I think I’d love to go back in time and be a Flapper. It seemed like such a good age to be alive… until the depression that is. But, luckily for me, Bright Young Things doesn’t go there and keeps us in the Roaring Twenties… for now anyway. I kind of can’t wait for the sequel!
2 responses to “Reviewed: Bright Young Things”
YA fiction is definitely one of my guilty pleasures as well. I guess I’m still in the age range that these books are written for though.
I like how you classify the new YA style as the “Stephanie Meyer style.” It is definitely true. I think this new style really takes away from good plots and replaces it with obsession of characters that are literally “out of this world.” My last few visits to the library involved going over to the YA section, glancing at all these vampire/werewolf/supernatural books and leaving in disgust.
I enjoy reading books that have a setting around the early 1900’s, mainly because these characters have different views and values compared to teens these days. The ones that take place before there were social networking, cell phones and the silly obsessions that teens take up these days.
I believe I walked passed this book a couple of times before. It sounds like something that I would read so I will for sure look for it during my next trip to the library. =)
Back when I was young, most of the YA books were fantasy adventures… probably because of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. But the difference between those two and Twilight is that those two were very very well written.
I feel like events falling through nicely is a characteristic of YA books that I don’t like as a person who’s almost 20. But they’re great for the actual young adults.