I wrote this a while ago and just found it again and realized I never posted it. So that's why there's no outlined review. I can't remember well enough to judge it fairly now. Anyways, enjoy the review and your last bits of summer. I do remember that this would make a great last book of summer read :)
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Title: Plus
Author: Veronica Chamber
Release Date: August 2010
Beatrice Wilson is our lovable Cinderella, who just got dumped by her very first boyfriend and put on twenty-five pounds. But then she’s discovered as a plus model. In the eyes of pop culture, Bee is Jessica Alba and then some! Now she must vanquish skinny rivals, fend off sleazy photogs, and banish jealous frenemies in her rise to superstardom. All the while, she’s torn between her first love and the surprisingly sincere up-and-coming rapper she tutors in calculus. But what’s better than finding your prince charming? Finally learning to love yourself!
Written Review:
Plus is a quick, light read with lots of character.
Bee’s voice was very fun and easy to get in to but at times she seemed a little too whiny and immature for a seventeen year old pre med at Columbia. Her “perfect” boyfriend Brian made me want to punch him from the very first time he was introduced. He was a jerk of a guy and I really didn’t like Bee sometimes for not having the common sense to see that. I also didn’t like how she seemed to ditch her friends and alter her personality to be with him. I really wanted to knock some sense into her and tell Brian to stop being such an awful jerk because every time she talked about him I immediately started to get annoyed with her too. And being annoyed at the main character isn’t a good way to connect with the book.
But even though Brian was such a jerk, their breakup could have been one of the best things to happen to Bee. The funk he knocked her into inadvertently led to her superstardom as a plus size model. He is what led her to gain the 25 pounds that made her plus size and he is what led Bee to finding a best friend in Chela, another one of his exes. And Chela was the one to push her into her modeling career.
Even though I didn’t like Bee at all times, I really did like this book though. It was very light and had a great summer feel to it. It also had a great self-image boosting message that not everyone that’s beautiful is paper thin. It had rivalries and friendships, jerky boys and a sweetheart ending, drama, scandal, self-doubt, self-confidence, and a great Cinderella story message.
The one thing that really took away enjoyment while reading this book was constant repetition. Things we already knew were being introduced repeatedly as if we had no clue of who the character was or what the situation happened to be. But I will in no way hold that against this book because I have a very strong feeling that that will be corrected in time for the final copy which publishes this August.
