Unrivaled is the first book that Harper Teen is releasing at the same time WORLDWIDE. Which is SO cool! It will be published in 16 languages, and over 200 countries simultaneously.
I love somewhat trashy/guilty pleasure TV shows more than I like to admit sometimes. Seriously, I LOVED Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, The OC, Greek, even Laguna Beach and The Hills.
All I knew about this book was: Hollywood, Fame, Money, Night Clubs, and desperate teens ready to do anything it takes to make a name for themselves.
Knowing that this was the type of book category that Unrivaled falls into, I was hoping for a drama-filled chapters with interesting, if unrealistic, situations. Kind of along the lines of the Gossip Girl books. What I got wasn’t an entertaining read, rather a fairly uneventful story I couldn’t connect to.
The beginning did grab my attention. The very first chapter ending with a shocking event that totally pulled me in. After that, though, we are brought back a month earlier, and the entire book leads up to the events of the first chapter.
Almost NOTHING happens in the entirety of 400 pages. Every new chapter I thought, “okay, maybe THIS chapter will be the chapter that this starts to get interesting.” And that never happened.
Layla, Tommy, and Aster are part of a “a high-stakes competition where Madison Brooks is the target.” They’re club promoters for the infamous Ira Redman. I couldn’t find interest in the Hollywood night life/club scene.
I felt like we spent a lot of time getting to know characters, who later kept acting completely out of characters. We jumped around to different characters heads besides the main three towards the end of the book, and it was just too much.
I guess I just couldn’t connect. Layla, a blogger who covers the lives of the rich and famous in LA, was the closest to someone I could understand their motivations and goals.
I DID LIKE the chapter titles, which were all song titles that did fit with each chapter’s contents. I also felt like the beginning was a great way to pull a reader in, but ultimately the story felt forced and boring. It is a first book in a series, so I might pick up the next one and see if the story becomes more interesting!
Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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