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jscarpa14 's review for:
Butterface
by Avery Flynn
Admittedly I mostly listened to the audiobook on this one. It's much better than The Schemer, the previous book in the series. Okay, it's not officially the same series, but having started with Tomboy, the third book in The Hartigans and having to backtrack to get other characters stories you really want to read the Harbor City Series then the Hartigans then Ice Knights so you can catch the little references to parts of other stories found in the series. That said because I started later, Lucy is referred in all the later books as the PR guru for the Ice Knights players, so how exactly does she not know who the Cajun Rage is in this book? Did I just hear that wrong or something because it would seem like all the girls would know the teams' biggest rivals. That seriously bugged me. Also in Tomboy the girls are Fallon's closest friends so how is it she's just meeting them in Butterface?
I'll be honest, I really didn't like the premise of this book where Ford spends so much of the story lying to Gina in order to further his job. And the fact that Gina beat herself up at one point for not listening to him really pissed me off. I both loved and hated Gina. I felt for her and the way she was mistreated and how the high school hurts followed her into adulthood. Like most women I have my own share of stories of mean little comments people have made about my appearance that followed me and I push out of my head on the regular. (The guy trying to pick up my cousin who described me as having shit green eyes, when she asked if he knew me always sticks in my head and there's this mean little part of me who hopes he's going bald and has a beer gut now and divorced after a really messy divorce where his ex took everything. Okay, so I hold a grudge, allow me my fantasies. And I've heard enough comments on my weight throughout my life to have lost count before I ever made it to high school. They can all go choke on their kale shakes while I enjoy another cookie.) So I can easily empathize with Gina and her feelings and I think most female readers will be about to do this. But the thing is she has it in her head that she just deserves it because she believes she's just as ugly as those nasty people say she is. I'd say she has a legitimate harassment complaint against the cops who set her up in the opening scene and instead of AT LEAST telling them they're assholes that need to go fuck themselves, she just puts her head down and walks away. She's almost a doormat to other people and their comments and the only person she ever ends up standing up to about it is the one guy who actually doesn't make any comments about her appearance. I really wanted to see this character tell some of the haters where to go shove it. I really wanted to see something bad happen to the mean people, like a random tractor-trailer running them over. And that's not the case. This book follows the same pattern as the last where the outside factors really aren't dealt with and the only issues resolved as the ones between the main couple and that seriously bothers me.
What I did like was the family relationships between these characters, not just the Hartigans who are as always the greatest. But the sibling relationship between the DeLucas was awesome. I loved Gina's crook brothers and I'd like to see a real happy ending for them at some point.
Overall while this isn't my favorite of Flynn's work, I really liked it and I love the characters and the world Flynn has created here. If I could pack up and move to Harbor City like it was a real place filled with these actual people I totally would. So yes, I'd definitely recommend it.
I'll be honest, I really didn't like the premise of this book where Ford spends so much of the story lying to Gina in order to further his job. And the fact that Gina beat herself up at one point for not listening to him really pissed me off. I both loved and hated Gina. I felt for her and the way she was mistreated and how the high school hurts followed her into adulthood. Like most women I have my own share of stories of mean little comments people have made about my appearance that followed me and I push out of my head on the regular. (The guy trying to pick up my cousin who described me as having shit green eyes, when she asked if he knew me always sticks in my head and there's this mean little part of me who hopes he's going bald and has a beer gut now and divorced after a really messy divorce where his ex took everything. Okay, so I hold a grudge, allow me my fantasies. And I've heard enough comments on my weight throughout my life to have lost count before I ever made it to high school. They can all go choke on their kale shakes while I enjoy another cookie.) So I can easily empathize with Gina and her feelings and I think most female readers will be about to do this. But the thing is she has it in her head that she just deserves it because she believes she's just as ugly as those nasty people say she is. I'd say she has a legitimate harassment complaint against the cops who set her up in the opening scene and instead of AT LEAST telling them they're assholes that need to go fuck themselves, she just puts her head down and walks away. She's almost a doormat to other people and their comments and the only person she ever ends up standing up to about it is the one guy who actually doesn't make any comments about her appearance. I really wanted to see this character tell some of the haters where to go shove it. I really wanted to see something bad happen to the mean people, like a random tractor-trailer running them over. And that's not the case. This book follows the same pattern as the last where the outside factors really aren't dealt with and the only issues resolved as the ones between the main couple and that seriously bothers me.
What I did like was the family relationships between these characters, not just the Hartigans who are as always the greatest. But the sibling relationship between the DeLucas was awesome. I loved Gina's crook brothers and I'd like to see a real happy ending for them at some point.
Overall while this isn't my favorite of Flynn's work, I really liked it and I love the characters and the world Flynn has created here. If I could pack up and move to Harbor City like it was a real place filled with these actual people I totally would. So yes, I'd definitely recommend it.