Sarra Manning Archives - Page 7 of 8

you have a book by an author you love so you know you’ll love the book and then when you read the book you love it and keep stopping to say silly things like ‘Oh my god I love this book!’ or ‘Author-name you are a genius’. I love it. You don’t say? Yeah. I say.

Last time I had this experience I was reading The Boy Book by E. Lockhart, which obviously I was going to love as I adored The Boyfriend List. I am having it again with Nobody’s Girl by Sarra Manning. I swear she just keeps getting better and better! Every new book is just so much more detailed and powerful than the ones before, although of course those still remain brilliant and stand up to being re-read afterwards. I’m only on chapter five, but I can recognise improvement right from the start.

I always read with my ‘writing hat’ on. Some writers complain that learning the craft of writing can spoil the pleasure of reading unless you make a deliberate effort not to think like a writer whilst you’re reading just for fun. This has not been my experience so far. Some advocate reading each book twice, once as a ‘reader’, and once as a ‘writer’, but my critical faculties are always on and usually at maximum power when I’m reading a book. I think this at least partly comes from having studied cultural theory, I always say that beginning to learn theory was like discovering that I live in the Matrix. I look at everything through that lens I developed as an undergraduate.

Yes, it involves thinking a lot. Yes, I can no longer bring myself to watch crap films in which a beautiful woman falls in love with some stupid man after various tedious slapstick things have happened. But I get to experience a added level of pleasure when I read or watch something that has been done right. I also admire nice plot twists, detailed characterisation, great dialogue – oh, how I love dialogue! I see how they did that, and I love it! I get especially excited when one of the things I particularly love to see in teen fiction turns up at the start of a book, because there is almost no way that it can fail to be good with one of these things in it. I first made up this list when talking to one of my postgraduate tutors about why I love teen fiction, and I included it in the commentary for my MA portfolio. I’ve added to it since, so now along with such things as ‘intelligent, critical narrators’, and ‘teenagers with slightly-more-glamourous-than-mine lives’, I have listed ‘quirky families’ and ‘characters with hobbies’. One day I’ll have to make a post about this list.

But today I am going to type up some reviews for Body Image and Self Perception Month, and then carry on with Nobody’s Girl. I am so excited! When I have read Nobody’s Girl I will be well prepared for the Chicklish birthday event having read every book by Sarra Manning and Simmone Howell and one of Luisa Plaja’s. Unfortunately my local library does not have Della Says: OMG! by Keris Stainton and I won’t have a chance to get it before Monday, but still, this is amazing, as most of the time when I go to see authors speak I haven’t actually read any of their books!

I haven’t posted anything that wasn’t strictly a review on this blog for ages. How did I do?

Picture by leochi

Molly Montgomery is being sued for 5 million pounds by her former record company, and she’s suing them back, despite not being even 20 years old yet. Her lawyer, confident they will win, asks her to write down the whole story of how she went from uncool teenager to front woman of The Hormones, so that he can build a case. This account makes up the bulk of this book.

It’s not the most original story – teenage fiction as a genre is filled with fantasies about ordinary teenagers who becomes celebrities – but it is unusually realistic. Molly forms the band with her best friends Jane and Tara, in the hope it would make them a little cooler, writing songs about Hello Kitty and magic markers, but it is soon hijacked by Dean and T, two boys who worm their way into the band by insulting them and promising that they could make the group sound better. Molly hates Dean at first but starts to fall for him as they are signed up by a record company and taken around the world to tour. But their manipulative manager doesn’t want them to date, and soon he starts to make other demands too, and things go from bad to worse as Molly’s virginity becomes hot gossip and Jane tries to live the rockstar stereotype.

I have enjoyed all of Sarra Manning’s books, but Guitar Girl is not one of my favourites – my favourites being Let’s Get Lost, and Diary Of A Crush 2: Kiss And Make Up, and Fashionistas: Irina. The plot of Guitar Girl was a bit predictable compared to the other stories, and I don’t think Dean makes an alluring enough romantic interest. What can I say? He’s not Dylan, and I’ll always love Dylan the best, although Noel from the Ruby Oliver series is giving him a run for his money these days. Dylan is all mixed up with nostalgia as I read the Diary of a Crush series in J-17 as an actual teenager, and was thereby hooked on art boys for life. But I think even if I was fourteen right now Dylan would beat Dean in the Sarra Manning Toxic Boy Showdown, although the contest is kind of rigged as Dylan gets three books and is essentially nicer.

Anyway, back to Guitar Girl. I thought it was more down-to-earth, with more details about the music business, than any other book about teenagers becoming pop stars that I have read. The characterisation is strong, although I wanted to know more about the histories of the various members of the band than the book includes, and Molly makes a believable teenage narrator. I loved the fast pace and thought that it captured the feeling of being a teenager really well. Despite my criticisms, I have read and enjoyed Guitar Girl more than once.

If you read and enjoy this book, you will also want to check out two of Sarra’s other books – Let’s Get Lost, and Irina from the Fashionistas series, because they feature appearances from characters in Guitar Girl, and you can see what happened next…

Here’s my review of Pretty Things, also by Sarra Manning.

Don’t you just love it when

Book Review: Guitar Girl, by Sarra Manning

Sarra Manning

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