Lizabeth Zindel

Three stars because it kept me engaged, but I really didn't like Lily at all. I thought she was silly and made really bad decisions over and over and over. I know that when I was her age, there were a lot of things I just didn't GET, so I probably would have been the same way. But then, she had these people SPELLING things out to her and she still just did her own thing and flat out refused to do her job.

Her dad kind of threw me off too. He was so adamant about her following through but then demanding she not go to a party that Sabrina specifically asked her to be at? WTF Dad? You can't be so stubborn about one thing and then change the rules to suit you.

I thought the premise was great and the writing was easy to read. It was Lily's actions that had me cringing through the whole thing. But then, I never did care for The Devil Wears Prada, so maybe this book wasn't for me to begin with.… (más)

A cautionary tale of the price of popularity and the difference between gossip and truth. Maggie moves from New Jersey to Manhattan with her mother after the divorce, and her grandfather pays for her to attend a posh private school for her senior year. Maggie can't break into any of the long-established cliques, and is completely excluded until she crashes the back-to-school bash thrown by the most popular girl. The party is raided by the police, and Maggie rescues the three most popular girls by hiding them at the home of one of her mother's friends. Maggie is invited into the group: The Revelers, and she is at first thrilled to be a part of the very wealthy group. They take her shopping, shower her with expensive gifts, and take her to their penthouse apartments and vacation beach homes. But there is a dark side to the Revelers -- they collect "truths" about all of the people at their school and write them down. Maggie realizes how dangerous secrets can be in the wrong hands, and how they can be used against people, but the other girls insist these are not just gossip -- they are truths about life. What is the line between truth and gossip, and how much power is in popularity? Something to read and consider before heading off to high school. Realistic fiction, 8th grade and up.… (más)

In this retooling of Hamlet, author Lizabeth Zindel gives the Shakespeare classic a thoroughly modern makeover. Throughout "A Girl," classic characters receive a gender switch: Holly = Hamlet; Oliver = Ophelia; Gardner = Gertrude; Claudia = Claudio; etc. In place of Hamlet, we have Holly, a female college student whose mother dies suddenly. Her father gets involved with another woman, who just happens to be her dead mother's sister, her Aunt Claudia. When Holly gets a visit from her mother's ghost, she wonders if there might be more to the story than what appears on the surface.

This version of Hamlet is infinitely less dense than the original, but it's breezy Cal-speak tone just doesn't impart the weight of the story. It's definitely a very dumbed-down take, to its (and the reader's) detriment. It's very difficult to see the rich character of Hamlet -- conflicted, three-dimensional, articulate -- turned into a college student who interjects "like" into her sentences. None of the characters in this remake is very well developed, or all that likable, so the book comes across as a poor imitator in comparison to the original. Zindel also takes liberties with the plot, which does nothing to enhance the story... If anything, it makes it even more trite and glib.

I'd recommend that readers start with the original before moving on to this contemporary take, otherwise their view of Hamlet might be slightly clouded.… (más)