Author: Holly Smale
Series: The Valentines (Book 1)
Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books
Release Date: 7th February 2019
ISBN13: 9780008254148
Synopsis
Introducing The Valentines. Fame – It Runs in the Family!
Sisters Hope, Faith and Mercy have everything: fame, success, money and beauty. But what Hope wants most of all is love, and it doesn’t matter how far she has to go to find it.
Except real-life isn't like the movies. Even if you're a Valentine...
My Review
I absolutely loved the Geek Girl series and I met Holly Smale at LFCC a couple of years ago. I definitely class myself as a fan, Harriet is the lovable geek that reminded me of me at times and I love Smale's writing which just hooked me in and carried me away.
I got this book when it first came out and managed to get it signed by Holly, but i didn't get round to reading it straight away. In fact it's sat on my shelf for the last year. As we are currently in lock down due to Corona Virus, I have a little bit more time to sit and read (around working from home, course study and housework). I wanted something that was fairly easy but would hook me in so I picked this book up.
Hope is a fifteen year old girl, daughter of famous film star mother and award winning director father, she has 3 older siblings who are all enjoying the lime light too. A family rule dictates that no member of the Valentine family will be exposed to the movie business before they turn 16 so Hope is desperately counting down the days until she is thrust into the world of fame and fortune. Hope loves the movies and sees everyday as action playing out, she often narrates her story like a film script, pausing and re-writing if something doesn't quite go her way.
Within the first couple of pages I already didn't like Hope, she is so over dramatic, self obsessed and just annoying. Although she is supposed to be 15 years old, she seems a lot younger to me - she is so immature and whiny that I would never have pictured her as old enough to be prepping for GCSE"s. Her parents have kept her at home, hiring a private tutor who she rarely pays attention to and her siblings ignore her a lot of the time- too busy with their own lives and issues, so Hope has had to find other ways to entertain herself. However a 15 year old with imaginary friends just seemed a bit juvenile to me, surely with all the advances in modern technology, she would at least be the member of some online forums or groups and have virtual friends.
The actual story line wasn't bad, I liked the idea of a privileged family and the youngest daughter trying to find her mark on the world whilst desperately looking for love and dealing with the split of her parents. However I found the 'scripts' that Hope act out really annoying and within a few chapters I started to skip them and just read the main body of the story.
The main plot of this book is Hope finding love for the first time, she meets Jamie on a London train, just like the horoscopes said she would and they have a whirlwind romance over the next week. He seems to be the perfect boy, and you know what they say, if something seems to perfect - it's probably not real. Jamie then leaves to go back to LA, but Hope has ways of making things work, her dad is currently shooting a movie in LA - so she jets off to save her own romance and her parents.
The love story was very predictable, very easy to work out what was coming next and what would happen. Jamie to me felt very superficial and way too 'nice' to be true, and I was shouting at Hope to wake up and see the reality.
I think my main issue was that i didn't like Hope as a character, she was just too self obsessed and such an airhead, never listening to anyone else and focusing more on clothes and make up than her family falling apart around her. I liked her siblings, the short snippets we got showed different personalities and some developed characters. I have found out that the next book is about Faith, which makes me torn, as she was my favourite out of all the family and I would love to read more about her.
I sometimes start to wonder if I am too old to read some teen fiction, i am more cynical and a lot of the plot lines seem too predictable and the characters too shallow - but I'm not a teenager anymore, although hair, make up, celebrities and boys were never a focus for me, so maybe it's just not my cup of tea.
If you are a fan of Holly or you want a nice easy read to escape for a couple of hours, then this could be the book for you. But for me, I just wanted to slap Hope an tell her to grow up.
My Rating
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