Review : Jane Austen Goes to Hollywood by Abby McDonald

Posted by on August 15, 2013 4:09 am in 2.5 stars reads | 1 comment

jane austen goes to hollywoodJane Austen Goes to Hollywood by Abby McDonald
Pages : 336
Genre : YA, Contemporary fiction
Stand Alone
My Rating : 2,5/5

From the back of the book  :

Hallie and Grace Weston have never exactly seen life eye to eye. So when their father dies and leaves everything to his new wife, forcing the girls to pack up and leave San Francisco for a relative’s house in shiny Beverly Hills, the two sisters take to their changing lot in typically different styles.

Shy, responsible Grace manages to make friends with an upbeat, enterprising girl named Palmer but still yearns for her old life — and the maybe-almost-crush she left behind. Meanwhile, drama queen Hallie is throwing herself headlong into life — and love — in L.A., spending every second with gorgeous musician Dakota and warding off the attention of brooding vet Brandon. But is Hallie blinded by the stars in her eyes? And is Grace doomed to forever hug the sidelines?

My Thoughts :

Jane Austen Goes to Hollywood was my fourth novel by Abby McDonald. You wouldn’t know this by following the blog since I failed to share my reviews for 2 out of 3 of the books I previously read (I’ll be fixing that this week!), but she’s an author I have really enjoyed in the past. She’s written about travel and romance and heartbreak, and I have always closed her books with a smile.

Unfortunately, her latest novel failed to entertain me in such a way. From the start, I felt the story was really rushed, cramming a lot of information and scenes in very few pages. It’s a feeling that never left me quite entirely, as the book progresses quickly through a year in Grace and Hallie’s life.

The narration also didn’t work quite well for me. Told in third person, it alternates between the two girls from one season to the other. Coupled with the rush of information and events and characters, I felt like I never got close to the characters, which in turn means I didn’t really care for them. It certainly didn’t help that I found Hallie to be excessively dramatic, almost to the point of being caricatural.

The story didn’t save the book either. In all honesty, I must disclaim here that I have very little memory of its inspiration, that is Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, so I can’t talk of whether the book was hugely inspired by it, or only in some places. But in any ways, I found the story here hugely, boringly predictable, and very hard to take seriously.

There are certainly positive things to mention about the book though; the Hollywood setting is fun, filled with colorful and interesting characters. I also loved that the girls weren’t white! It’s so refreshing to have people of color represented in a YA contemporary as main characters. There should be a lot more of these around!

So, this won’t be the end of me reading Abby McDonald; I only feel like maybe this wasn’t her best effort to date. But I wouldn’t hesitate a moment to recommend her previous novels, two of which I’ll be posting mini-reviews for later this week. Stay tuned!

1 Comment

  1. I have this book but haven’t read it yet so I can’t say how close it is to the original. Glad you were able to find some things to like about it though.

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