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[ADORKABLE GRRL]

THE SCHOOL OF BEAUTY AND CHARM by Melanie Sumner

This book wasn't bad. In fact, it was pretty good and amusing in parts. There were several problems with it, though:

First, it seems to me that this book should be more of a collection of short stories upon a theme (such as Rebecca Wells's Little Alters Everywhere which is a prequel of stories to her more famous book The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood -- as in, individual stories about a family). While the characters are vibrant and colorful and the anecdotes are charming and laugh-worthy, it is a stretch to try to tie them together into an arching plot. Then there is the question of voice: The entire book is told from the perspective of Louise Peppers (the youngest daughter of the family) and then in the second to last chapter of the book, the voice changes oddly to that of her father, Henry Peppers. And, the book it's self ends in an unexpected, disenfranchising manner that doesn't fit with the rest of the book.

The story is that of Louise Peppers and the Peppers family - a good, quirky, Southern Baptist family in the small town of Counterpoint, Georgia. Mother Florida, father Henry and brother Roderick. Not to mention their small poodle, Puff LeBlanc, who in the middle of the book gets carried off by a near-sighted owl.

The stories that Louise tells are her own, of a young woman coming of age in the south and her rebellion against her odd, yet fairly strict, parents. And, her struggle to deal with a family tragedy.

Overall, not bad - a little patchy in places. Didn't love it, didn't hate it. Would recommend it as a quick, mindless read on an airplane (which is what it was for me.)



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