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A review by sterling8
Stars and Smoke by Marie Lu
2.0
ATY 2023: # 10. A book related to one of the Spice Girls' "personalities" (Posh)
SFF Shelf Cleanup: Showstopper
This one was too YA for me. I liked the author's Warcross series but I wonder if I would like her other work.
The author describes this one as "Kingsman meets The Bodyguard" and that's pretty accurate. I don't know much about K-Pop or the boy band scene and that might have kept me from attaching too.
I think the problem was that I could not believe in or like either protagonist. Winter Young (what a name) is a poor little rich boy. His older brother is gone and he feels like he's just a disappointment to his mom as her only remaining child. This international superstar closes flower shops so he can hand select the tulips that he thinks his mom will like the most (tulips are her favorite flower) so that he can bring her a bouquet every time he leaves for a tour stop. His mom only likes unwrinkled money bills, so when she got stuck in Paris that one time because all she could get was wrinkled money, he personally flew in his private jet to bring her fresh bills so that she could get out of that rough predicament.(Yes, this really happens in the book.) But she just doesn't love him the way she loves his dead brother (who Winter also idolizes). Plus he is incredibly beautiful and the hottest guy ever, so smart that he can flawlessly imitate how to take down a person with a knife after seeing it once, worked his way from backup dancer to his own solo brand, took hiphop and tap lessons and even spent six months in Russia learning ballet all while writing his own songs that no one can resist, all before the age of nineteen. I just can't anymore.
Sydney the bodyguard. She's a natural polylinguist, can kill you with a piece of paper, but doesn't trust anyone because she comes from a Hard Life (her mother died when she was a young teen). She also is nineteen. She can steal the earrings out of your ears. I just didn't like her.
So, the Kingsman style secret agency with James Bond technology needs Winter's help to infiltrate a very very VIP party in order to get evidence on the bad guy who is throwing it. The James Bond technology idea sounded cool but nothing much really comes of all the gadgets. Winter and Sydney of course can't resist each other even if they don't like each other at first.
This would probably have worked well as a movie when you could just spin along through all the pretty people, settings and glittery technology and romance. There was too much time in this book for me to notice the silliness. The plot is pretty easy to predit, which again wouldn't be too bad in a two hour movie but drags in a book. I don't feel the need to go any further with this series.
SFF Shelf Cleanup: Showstopper
This one was too YA for me. I liked the author's Warcross series but I wonder if I would like her other work.
The author describes this one as "Kingsman meets The Bodyguard" and that's pretty accurate. I don't know much about K-Pop or the boy band scene and that might have kept me from attaching too.
I think the problem was that I could not believe in or like either protagonist. Winter Young (what a name) is a poor little rich boy. His older brother is gone and he feels like he's just a disappointment to his mom as her only remaining child. This international superstar closes flower shops so he can hand select the tulips that he thinks his mom will like the most (tulips are her favorite flower) so that he can bring her a bouquet every time he leaves for a tour stop. His mom only likes unwrinkled money bills, so when she got stuck in Paris that one time because all she could get was wrinkled money, he personally flew in his private jet to bring her fresh bills so that she could get out of that rough predicament.(Yes, this really happens in the book.) But she just doesn't love him the way she loves his dead brother (who Winter also idolizes). Plus he is incredibly beautiful and the hottest guy ever, so smart that he can flawlessly imitate how to take down a person with a knife after seeing it once, worked his way from backup dancer to his own solo brand, took hiphop and tap lessons and even spent six months in Russia learning ballet all while writing his own songs that no one can resist, all before the age of nineteen. I just can't anymore.
Sydney the bodyguard. She's a natural polylinguist, can kill you with a piece of paper, but doesn't trust anyone because she comes from a Hard Life (her mother died when she was a young teen). She also is nineteen. She can steal the earrings out of your ears. I just didn't like her.
So, the Kingsman style secret agency with James Bond technology needs Winter's help to infiltrate a very very VIP party in order to get evidence on the bad guy who is throwing it. The James Bond technology idea sounded cool but nothing much really comes of all the gadgets. Winter and Sydney of course can't resist each other even if they don't like each other at first.
This would probably have worked well as a movie when you could just spin along through all the pretty people, settings and glittery technology and romance. There was too much time in this book for me to notice the silliness. The plot is pretty easy to predit, which again wouldn't be too bad in a two hour movie but drags in a book. I don't feel the need to go any further with this series.