Scan barcode
A review by hellalibrary
American Girls by Alison Umminger
3.0
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Flatiron Books in exchanged for an unbiased review.
In the beginning of American Girls, we first meet Anna, a fifteen-year-old who has stolen her mother’s credit card and run away to LA to live with her older sister for the summer, who is also an actress.
As the story progresses, Anna becomes entangled with her sister’s world in Hollywood, meeting producers, and other actors, and while helping her sister in her new role, she becomes completely enraptured with Charles Manson and the Manson girls who committed his murders for him in the late 1960’s.
The more she learns about the Manson girls, the more she feels connected to them, and how much her life has become to parallel theirs.
Not only that, she quickly realizes that the glamorous and glitzy life of Hollywood isn’t all that it appears to be.
This is a very character-driven novel about being a young woman and coming into your own, and trying to figure out who you are in the world, the problem I found, however, was that I didn’t think that Anna was that strong of a character. I found her to be too whiny at times as well as incredibly selfish. I couldn’t connect with her voice.
The story was compelling enough for me to want to keep reading, but I felt that something was missing. A lot of parts seemed to drag for me and whenever an interesting storyline was introduced and I felt that things were speeding up, it was pushed away to the side with no real resolutions.
There were some complex characters as well as a complicated relationship between Anna and her family and a strong theme of redemption throughout the book that I did enjoy.
I wanted it to be more though.
In the beginning of American Girls, we first meet Anna, a fifteen-year-old who has stolen her mother’s credit card and run away to LA to live with her older sister for the summer, who is also an actress.
As the story progresses, Anna becomes entangled with her sister’s world in Hollywood, meeting producers, and other actors, and while helping her sister in her new role, she becomes completely enraptured with Charles Manson and the Manson girls who committed his murders for him in the late 1960’s.
The more she learns about the Manson girls, the more she feels connected to them, and how much her life has become to parallel theirs.
Not only that, she quickly realizes that the glamorous and glitzy life of Hollywood isn’t all that it appears to be.
This is a very character-driven novel about being a young woman and coming into your own, and trying to figure out who you are in the world, the problem I found, however, was that I didn’t think that Anna was that strong of a character. I found her to be too whiny at times as well as incredibly selfish. I couldn’t connect with her voice.
The story was compelling enough for me to want to keep reading, but I felt that something was missing. A lot of parts seemed to drag for me and whenever an interesting storyline was introduced and I felt that things were speeding up, it was pushed away to the side with no real resolutions.
There were some complex characters as well as a complicated relationship between Anna and her family and a strong theme of redemption throughout the book that I did enjoy.
I wanted it to be more though.