Amanda6′s #CBR4 Review 32: Messy by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Amazon: “After a rocky start in Spoiled, Brooke Berlin and her newly discovered half sister, Molly Dix, have settled into something like sisterly love, but the drama is far from over.
Now that Brooke’s caught a taste of fame and her movie star father’s attention, she wants to launch a blog that will position her as the ultimate Hollywood insider. But between schoolwork, party-planning committee meetings, and spa treatments, she hardly has the time to write it herself…
Enter Max McCormack, an aspiring author with a terrible after-school job pushing faux meat on the macrobiotic masses of La-La Land. Max reluctantly agrees to play Brooke’s ghost-blogger for an impressive salary, and the site takes off, but how long can their lie last? In person, Brooke can’t live up to the intellectual wit of openbrooke.com, and Max soon begins to resent hiding her genius behind a bandage dress-wearing blonde. Can the girls work together to stay on top, or will the truth come out and ruin everything they’ve built?”
After having a lukewarm opinion about Spoiled, the book that precedes this one, I am happy to say that I genuinely enjoyed Messy and found myself grinning or laughing out loud at several points as I read. It seems that the Fug Girls, Heather and Jessica, got into a nice groove with this one, possibly from tackling very topical subject matter (celebrity gossip blogging), but more likely — in my opinion — because they got to flex their trademark snark more often through returning character and new protagonist Max. I think I may have also enjoyed the story itself more because it was less of a girls-at-war story (does anyone remember the show Popular? Spoiled is basically that) and more about growth and discovery of common ground.
Messy is more a spin-off than a sequel of Spoiled, so you don’t need to have read the latter to enjoy the former. If you’re in need, then, of a quick, funny read, this is a good one to check out!
