Hi y’all! I’ve been doing a ton of reading lately so I thought I would starting posting reviews of the books as I finish them. Yesterday I finished Luckiest Girl Alive: A Novel
, making it my first official summer read.
, making it my first official summer read.
Here’s the summary from Goodreads:
As a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School, Ani FaNelli endured a shocking, public humiliation that left her desperate to reinvent herself. Now, with a glamorous job, expensive wardrobe, and handsome blue blood fiancé, she’s this close to living the perfect life she’s worked so hard to achieve.
But Ani has a secret.
There’s something else buried in her past that still haunts her, something private and painful that threatens to bubble to the surface and destroy everything.
With a singular voice and twists you won’t see coming, Luckiest Girl Alive explores the unbearable pressure that so many women feel to “have it all” and introduces a heroine whose sharp edges and cutthroat ambition have been protecting a scandalous truth, and a heart that’s bigger than it first appears.
The question remains: will breaking her silence destroy all that she has worked for—or, will it at long last, set Ani free?
I LOVED this book…after the first chapter. The plot is partially told in flashbacks to the main character’s (Ani) high school days. The other chapters are present day. The book begins with 28 year old Ani. In her high school days, she is referred to as TifAni, which makes sense eventually. I had a hard time understanding anything in the first chapter. It just jumped right in, giving the reader little clues that eventually made sense but at the time confused me. There were also A LOT of characters to keep up with that eventually didn’t matter and were not mentioned again. Maybe if I had sat down to read in one sitting when I first started the book it would have been easier to understand but once I got past the first chapter, the book really picked up and I couldn’t put it down.
The one word that comes to mind with this book is SHOCKING. I didn’t see a lot of the events coming and were shocked to read on. Once one big thing I happened, I thought that was it, but then the author threw another curve ball. Seriously, right up until the last page!
When I like a book, I research others’ thoughts on it, which is what I did with this book. The majority, if not all, say the main character is unlikeable. I totally get that, but for me, she wasn’t. I knew after reading the first flashback that whatever happened to her in high school made her into what she was today. It made me feel sorry for her and in some strange way, it made me admire her.
My favorite parts were the flashbacks to high school. It reminded me of Prep: by Curtis Sittenfeld, which is one of my favorite books.
The ending was good. I wish the author would have went into detail what went on to happen with Ani and Andrew, but I agreed with everything else that happened in the end, especially the way she went about it!
I picked up the book before realizing Reese Witherspoon had instagrammed it and is planning on turning it into a movie! Anything that Reese reads, I want to read! #rolemodel
Rating: 8.5/10
Recommend to a friend: Yes! Yes! Yes! This will be a hot summer read, y’all!
