Review : Girl Stays in the Picture
Girl Stays in the Picture by Melissa de la Cruz
Pages : 432
Genre : YA, Chick lit
My Rating : 
What it’s about :
Girl Stays in the Picture takes you for a summer in Saint Tropez, where gossip reigns and famous people are fighting to keep their star shining. This summer, three girls with very different backgrounds will come together and try to make the best of their time in France : Devon, the just-out-of-rehab starlet; Livia, who dropped more than half her weight in a year – but not her self esteem issues; and finally Casey, the normal girl who plays assistant for her supposedly best friend and star Summer. Between movie sets drama and a variety of romances, this summer will be hot, hot, hot!
A few years ago, long before I really got into reading young adult fiction, I went to the bookstore looking for a nice, light read with lots of sun and which wouldn’t require too much brain power. At that time, I found exactly what I wanted in Melissa de la Cruz’s Au Pairs series. With Girl Stays in the Picture, I feel like de la Cruz has created a similar world : in that stressful time that were end of terms exams, I thanked her for that!
There wasn’t much happening and the characters were a bit two-dimensional. Still, I didn’t have much expectations when I started reading it, and maybe that’s why I could appreciate it this much. I was a little slow to get into it, but once I was, I read most of the 432 pages in a day.
It was light, full of fun, and the characters were likeable enough – totally candy cotton read. I would have love to see a little less predictability in some of the characters, but Girl Stays in the Picture is what it is : a guilty pleasure with which you can relax for a short while. One of the things I really liked about the book were those short gossip columns in between the chapters, which completed the story in different ways. It was a cute and fun way to remind us that we were in a world ruled by gossips and media.
Also, the book ends on a major cliffhanger, and while I have couple ideas on where this all leads, there is nothing certain about it. The ending was good, and it does concludes most of the story lines in the book, but this last page leaves you wanting more, and I couldn’t find any information on a second book coming out. I guess I’ll have to be patient!
Thanks for your review – I don’t think this book is for me. Maybe I’m too old or something.
Reminds me of the Pretty Little Liars series — just pure froth, nothing heavy, but perfect when you want to zoom through a book and be purely entertained. In books like this, for me, most of the characters fall flat… but that’s OK when you’re speed-reading, hehe 🙂