Beth’s Reviews > Pete's Exhaustive Review of Modelland > Status Update

Derk expresses some impatience with us not getting to Modelland right away. 30 pages in, I'm okay with having some scenes establishing the setting and characters, such as learning about Tookie's BFF. 150 pages before we see Modelland is probably too much ramp-up time, considering this is a YA, though.

He's right that the "serious stuff" is handled very poorly, as I also mentioned in my comment on M's ch. 2.

Ch. 1: the "beauties and uggos" part of this section was quite funny. I've never come across someone beautiful who claimed they were homely as a kid, myself. But that fits into the narrative that seems to be forming in Modelland, of a weird uggo kid who gets the golden ticket--er, SMIZE--and moves on to greater, more glamorous things.

Prologue: Derk goes on at length about a simile that doesn't work on a literal level because of Banks' use of the word "lift." A simile needn't be viable on a literal level as well as an evocative one, but the verb isn't this one's main sin, imo, but comparing fog to a bra. It's just clunky and silly.