At first this was going to be a humorous YA fiction title: WRONG!

It was a non-fiction semi-biography of a name-dropping supposed-to-be famous actress and her life as a failed debutante.

The book was simply written, redundant, & boring. The author clearly didn't learn much in her English classes; her manner of writing makes her sound uneducated, which apparently is not the case.

She wrote quite a bit about her friend, Alma, who died in a car accident while driving the author's car. No explanation what happened, how it happened.... and basically that was the end of Alma. Miraculously the car returns later in the book, sort of like an after-thought.

This was poorly written, not funny, and lacked substance. ( )

There were things I loved and things I rolled my eyes at in this book. First of all, I want to say I did not pick this book up expecting it to be the end all and be all of memoirs - I expected something light and fluffy, and it was exactly that. My issues with the book were, in spite of some flashes here and there of laugh out loud humor, the first half of the book was fairly boring. It wasn't until the story spiraled into a "tell all" regarding notable names like Julia Stiles, Julia Roberts, Diana Ross and other celebrities that it started to get more interesting... if not a little dramatic.

While I enjoyed learning about the south from Anna Field's point of view, I think she was not as much a rebel as she tries to make herself out to be. I mean, rebel or no, she still attended a well-off girls finishing school, went through all sorts of classes and rebelled in ways that kids in every day schools do. In spite of that rebellion, everything was taken care of for her, she wasn't thrown out of school, she still got an ivy league education and it was just hard to feel sorry for the poor, oppressed girl from the South.

I can't whole-heartedly recommend this book, but I will say this: If you want a book that will give you some fun sayings, some interesting looks at how the "rich" of the south live, then I'd at least skim through it. ( )

Anna Fields, you had me at You can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl! I love nothing more than reading a story set in the south, or devouring a good memoir. When I heard that a book was coming out that had the best of both worlds, I knew I had to read this book.

I was literally jumping with joy when I got my advanced reader copy of Confessions of a Rebel Debutante in the mail last month. I knew I was going to love it, and love it I did. Anne Fields not only has written a charming, funny and fabulous memoir, but she tells a great story about what happens when a North Carolina society girl gets kicked out of cotillion classes and doesn’t make it as a deb. You can not believe where this Rebel Deb’s life leads her.

Anna Fields deliciously describes her childhood and what life was like going through (and eventually getting kicked out of) cotillion was like, beginning at age eleven, all the while making fun of everything about debbing including herself down to her big butt. After seeing her photo on the back of my book, I had a hard time believing she was ever fat, because she reminds me a little bit of Reese Witherspoon. But she forces me to believe it with tales of being a tall girl who wore glasses and had bad skin and a white girl ‘fro after reading her hilarious cheerleading tryout story to the tune of Too Legit to Quit.

To read the rest of my review, visit my blog here:

http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/confessions-of-a-rebel-debu... ( )

(arroyo grande library)

(arroyo grande library)