School Library Journal Review
Gr 7-10-Laura, a scholarship student at an elite high school in New York City, is surrounded by superficial, backstabbing rich girls, all obsessed with having the best Sweet Sixteen party. Despite the differences in lifestyles, she has a solid group of friends, as well as a best friend, Whitney. Everything is running smoothly until the new girl, Sophie, arrives. She is extremely rich, pretty, and fashionable, and wiggles her way right into Laura's group of friends and disrupts the equilibrium of the clique. Before long, everyone is fighting. Laura is the only one who remains true to herself and, with the help of a certain boy, learns about the importance of friendship. Designer names are dropped throughout and the girls are fixated on their weight, capturing some of the issues that teenage girls obsess over in America. But underneath all the fluff and superficiality are lessons on friendship and love.-Kristen M. Todd, Middle Country Public Library, Centereach, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
This would-be diversion takes its plot straight out of the official Chick Lit recipe file (pre-teen division): first, pirate a Gossip Girl setting (fictional Tate Academy, "the top private all-girls academy in New York," on the Upper East Side); add in a character reminiscent of the A-List series (designer-draped Sophie, an L.A. native and daughter of a big-time producer); borrow the central plot device of MTV's My Super Sweet 16; and sprinkle liberally with brand names. For years, poor-but-proud aspiring fashion designer Laura, who narrates, has been content to play second fiddle to her self-assured, "effortlessly flawless" best friend, Whitney. Sophomore year promises more of the same until two events shake up the status quo: brash Sophie joins the girls' class, and Whitney sets out to nab Jake ("more than just a stud horse with a stunning face"), whom Laura considers a special friend. Sophie and Whitney form a tenuous alliance: one minute they are planning an elaborate joint sweet 16 bash, and the next they are sworn enemies competing over Jake-and everything else-with Laura acting as the mediator until both girls turn on her. Meanwhile, Laura's evolving relationship with Jake confuses her (although its general direction will be crystal clear to readers). The torturously trendy dialogue ("I can totally tell you are emitting a killer style vibe") outstays its welcome. Though the sleek cover art promises guilty pleasures galore, what's inside is, as the narrator might put it, just plain boring-issimo. Ages 12-up. (July) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Horn Book Review
A war of the divas breaks out at Tate Academy, a private all-girls' school, where queen bee Whitney and chic newcomer Sophie (who share a birthday) compete for sweet sixteen party guests--and nice-girl Laura ends up stuck in the middle. Irritating dialogue, contrived plot lines, and unabashedly superficial characters make for a wholly unremarkable teen-queen melodrama. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Excerpts
Bittersweet Sixteen Chapter One There's one thing you have to know. In the world of private schools, penthouses on Park Avenue, chauffeur-driven Bentleys, and $100-a-plate family dinners at Le Cirque, one thing reigns supreme as the pinnacle of a tenth-grade girl's social calendar in New York: the almighty Sweet Sixteen birthday extravaganza. It was the first day of school, sophomore year. That September anticipatory stress was coursing through every capillary of every student, and not because of the backbreaking textbooks already tucked into our Marc Jacobs bags for the nightly grind. It was because the competition for the best Sweet Sixteen soiree was about to start, and it was steep. I mean, way more cutthroat than the honor society plaque. Let me back up. My name is Laura Finnegan and I live in New York City. My school is not your average football 'n' cheerleader, pom-pom, pep-rally, flag-waving, all-American Rydell High kind of place. No varsity letters, no football games, no prom king . . . no prom. See, my school, Tate Academy, is -- gasp -- all girls . I know, nightmare, right? Oh, and did I mention the uniform? Gray pleated skirt and white button-down shirt. Not that we really care; I mean, who are we trying to flirt with by our lockers? No one! Oh, and btw, we don't even have lockers; we have carpeted lounges with individual closets opening onto the couch-filled room. See, Tate is the top private all-girls academy in New York, a bastion of education and refinement that has been enlightening the city's finest young ladies for over two hundred years. Jackie O. personally saw to its landmark preservation in the eighties, when the ivy was eating away at the historic limestone facade. Located on the überposh Upper East Side, it boasts a student directory where most of the last names are the same as Fortune 500 companies. Except for moi -- I don't recall seeing Finnegan, my family's name, on any publicly traded stocks, or published in Forbes , or published ever , for that matter. Okay, maybe in a scholarly quarterly journal or something, but certainly not in the glossy party pictures of Vogue or Town & Country , where I regularly spied my classmates' moms in their couture designer duds. Luckily, I don't really have to deal with all the over-the-top craziness of my own Sweet Sixteen. See, when I talk about these parties, I'm not talking about pizza and Pepsi at the local bowling alley. I mean black tie. I mean hotel ballrooms and flowers and lighting schemes and bands; events that cost more than a down payment for a small house in Ronkonkoma. But because my parents are NYU professors and barely have enough dough to have a Chuck E. Cheese fete, freaking about having the best bash isn't even an option. Don't get me wrong; it's not like I'm on welfare or anything, but my parents can't even pay twenty grand a year for tuition at Tate on their teacher's salaries, so they obviously are not going to cough up half a mill on a rager that lasts a few hours. And although I admit that sometimes I like to imagine what sort of multimillion-dollar soiree I would host if I had the chance, honestly, seeing how everyone was wigging over hatching their gilded plans made it a little easier to be poor. So this autumn, when we all returned to school, I was prepared to ignore all the party-planning brouhaha and just dive into my textbooks and chalk up some A's so I had a decent chance of a scholarship to an Ivy. The morning crunch of girls packed our class lounge, snapping cell phones shut, hanging up Gucci overcoats, and unpacking their Prada book bags into their closets. I said hi and greeted some of my classmates, asking breezily about their summers and hearing their litany of whirlwind adventures and world travel -- one skied in the Alps, one attended summer classes at Le Rosée in Switzerland, one worked with "youths" in inner-city Chicago by day (then checked in to sleep at the Drake Hotel by night), and one hot-air ballooned through Scandinavia. Me, I worked at a camp in Maine teaching sewing in the crafts department and had fun but was psyched to come home and see my friends. Most of all, my best friend, Whitney. Whitney Blake is pretty much perfect. But not annoyingly perfect, just effortlessly flawless. Buttery blond and blue-eyed with Waspy facial architecture that Michelangelo would have used as a blueprint for his next statue, she was christened in Baby Dior, summered in Southampton, and sampled her first potato galette with caviar at age seven. I know, it sounds nuts, but it's all she's ever known, and she's actually really down to earth. Otherwise, I wouldn't be friends with her. We bonded from day one when she complimented my French braid in second grade, and since I am an only child and she has an older brother she never sees, we became almost like sisters. She never made a big deal about my non-glam background; in fact, she loves my fam -- and the fact that my house is normal, happy, and chill. If her parents are jet set, mine are sofa set: mellow, book reading, and always relaxed. Whitney and I just get each other the way old friends do; we complete each other's thoughts and sentences; it's like we have a code. We do have our differences; I can get stressed out (schoolwork, parents, life) and she's usually very calm and confident. That's because when you've pretty much been the queen bee for as long as anyone can remember, no one tries to dethrone you. The whole Sweet Sixteen thing? Not a thorn in Whit's side -- she and everyone else knew her January party would blow everyone else's out of the Evian. She's not cocky about it; she just knows. Like with guys. They woooor ship her. I mean, putty in her manicured hands. They circle around her like sharks on the prowl for her size-four chum. Bittersweet Sixteen . Copyright © by Carrie Karasyov . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Bittersweet Sixteen by Jill Kargman, Carrie Karasyov All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
