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May 16, 2015 Janet | purrfectpages rated it liked it

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Whenever something makes a big splash in the literary world, you can be sure to expect a slew of copycats to come along, trying to do the same. Luckiest Girl Alive is no exception. In the blurb describing the novel, a carefully penned comparison to smash hit, Gone Girl is unlikely to go unnoticed. In fact, not only is it not likely to go unnoticed, it also likely to do the opposite.

But herein lies the problem. Suddenly novels like Luckiest Girl Alive are getting far more attention than they des Whenever something makes a big splash in the literary world, you can be sure to expect a slew of copycats to come along, trying to do the same. Luckiest Girl Alive is no exception. In the blurb describing the novel, a carefully penned comparison to smash hit, Gone Girl is unlikely to go unnoticed. In fact, not only is it not likely to go unnoticed, it also likely to do the opposite.

But herein lies the problem. Suddenly novels like Luckiest Girl Alive are getting far more attention than they deserve, merely because they *kinda, sorta* have the same vibe as their older, prettier sister, so to speak. This hurts the latter novel on two levels. On one level, expectations are higher going in. "Oh wow! I loved Gone Girl! I'm sure to love this, too!" On the second level, there's the inevitable fall off. Sure, interest will be there at first, but if reviews are only so so (as this one is) chances are the early buzz will wear off, leaving nothing but mild interest.

If all of this sounds unnecessarily harsh, it's because it's the truth. Luckiest Girl Alive wasn't a horrible novel, however it didn't have anything to make it particularly memorable either. Our heroine, if you could call her that, is Tiffani aka Ani. Ani is a successful business woman who is about to marry into money, and maybe love? Ani is depicted as someone who has worked hard to fit in to the land of the rich and beautiful. At the start of the novel we meet Ani on the cusp of her lifetime dream. What is her lifetime dream you might ask? Well it's to be beautiful, thin, successful and rich. In other words, Ani has worked hard to consider herself better than everyone else.

But Ani was not always so put together. In flashbacks we get to know Ani when she was Tiffani. Tiffani is an insecure fourteen year old who just started a new high school and is dying to fit in. In fact, she wants so badly to be accepted that she is willing to brush aside some pretty horrible things that happen to her. But then the ultimate horrible thing happens and suddenly, there is no going back, until of course she has to in order to move on.

Here is my BIGGEST problem with Luckiest Girl Alive....are you ready? I didn't like our "heroine". I didn't like Tiffani, and I didn't like Ani either. And although a lot of time is spent trying to show how far Ani has come, I don't really see it that way. Tiffani was a girl who was dying to be accepted and approved of, and Ani is the same exact way. She's shallow and callous. And despite some pretty awful things occurring, I still didn't find myself rooting for her. I didn't find anyone to root for, actually. And when you think about it, what good is a story without an element of both good AND evil?

That's why, to me, Luckiest Girl Alive is just another story about a girl when all is said and done.
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May 16, 2024 Meghan Moran Burdge is currently reading it

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