Review #155: The Daughters by Joanna Philbin

The Daughters is the first book in the Daughters series by Joanna Philbin. Goodreads says:

The only daughter of supermodel Katia Summers, witty and thoughtful Lizzie Summers likes to stick to the sidelines. The sole heir to Metronome Media and daughter of billionaire Karl Jurgensen, outspoken Carina Jurgensen would rather climb mountains than social ladders. Daughter of chart-topping pop icon Holla Jones, stylish and sensitive Hudson Jones is on the brink of her own music breakthrough. By the time freshman year begins, unconventional-looking Lizzie Summers has come to expect fawning photographers and adoring fans to surround her gorgeous supermodel mother. But when Lizzie is approached by a fashion photographer that believes she's "the new face of beauty," Lizzie surprises herself and her family by becoming the newest Summers woman to capture the media's spotlight.

This book was pretty damn decent. Not without its problems, I really liked this book. Although like Ten Miles Past Normal, I felt everything happened too quickly. From Lizzie's burgeoning career, to her love story, etc, everything felt too f()()king short. I wish everything was more fleshed out.

Lizzie was alright. I feel like she had major mood swings and made poor choices/bad assumptions, but overall I kind of liked her. I know what it's like to not feel pretty, and it definitely feels like that, so that was definitely a realistic characteristic. Hudson and Carina were also great characters, although I thought they were a bit too pushy/forceful with Lizzie and her career. On top of that, they made the same bad assumptions Lizzie made, and simply agreed with her instead of trying to be reasonable and see things from other perspectives.  Other characters felt a bit too over-exaggerated.

Ms. Philbin's style was fine. Since she herself is a daughter of a famous celebrity (Regis Philbin is her father), I feel like she got that aspect right. However, I feel she tried too hard to write from a teenager's perspective. I could see where Ms. Philbin was straining to come up with things teenagers would say, and that downgraded this book a lot. I don't know whether or not I'll read the next book, so stay tuned to find out.

I'll next be reviewing Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters by Natalie Standiford.

Until next time, viva la literature!