book is the inspiration for the CW show 'Privileged' has the unfortunate case of unsympathetic characterization especially when concerning Yale tutor Megan Smith.
While the CW show was given a season to flesh out characters and portrayed Megan as more earnest and well natured from the beginning, the novel suffers from shallow people doing shallow acts.
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The ending is rushed in order to redeem key characters namely Megan and the overprivileged Baker twins.
Overall, the book was scandalous and fun, but it was difficult to find a character to 'root' for.
The protagonist, Megan Smith, was overly flawed to the point that there wasn't a great deal to relate to, and there was no twinge of pain when she was prepared to get her comeuppance for her duplicitous acts.
The twins do not far much better, with Sage Baker being the worst of the archetypal 'mean girl' with very little redeeming qualities save for the supposed love of her twin sister Rose.
This book is a oneanddone deal, and if I feel nostalgic, I'd rather watch the CW 'Privilege' than reread Dean's novel of the rich and famous.
If you ask me how to teach a filthy rich girls, i'll come up with an idea: isolate them in a jail cell and let them have a bitter taste of life.
But Zoey Dean had another idea in mind
Or rather, . . another cliche. Yes cliche about a girl who's life turning upside down when she had offered to teach the most bimbotic twins in the world how to pass their SAT test in order to get their trustfunds back.
She turned into the likes of the twins, met another amazing boy and fell in love, forgetting her lovelife was waiting back in new york.
. . then BAM!!! things come crashing down then she started to pick up her old self, go on a journey of making things right and the end.
I was like what
Ok lah this is chiclit and i should really stop reading books where everybody dies in the end and there were bloods and corpses everywhere but It's waaaaayyyy too predictable and the story fell flat in my head.
It had a chunk of big cliches and loopholes and I don't know, I feel like it's a good summerreads but nothing remarkable here.
I guess this is just not my kind of book, Fun book! I loved the main character, Lots of laughs. After reading a number of much more serious books, this light frothy novel called to me from the shelves of the library.
I'm not crazy about the term "chick lit," because it's too broadly applied to a lot of books by women.
. . but if the book has a rags to riches story, including fashion, a plainish woman who suddenly becomes gorgeous and meets the man of her dreams, and gets the job of her dreams at the end.
. . you've got chick lit. The career is usually journalism or marketing,
A supposedly brilliant Yale grad withK in loans is shocked to learn that she's not able to get a fantastic job in the NY publishing world right off the bat.
When her life goes sour she gets a job offer to tutor two spoiled brat rich girls in Palm Beach, FL, formonths.
If she's able to coach them into passing the SAT, she will have her college debts paid off.
By the end of the novel I was frankly tired of the designer name dropping, and the idea that she was "gorgeous," but all she needed were a great haircut, expensive makeup, and designer clothing to make it so.
I felt like I had just gorged on a big bag of potato chips.
. . having eaten junk but not feeling filled up, I guess I need to read a twostar book every once in awhile to appreciate the really good ones!! okay, it could be that my brain is on overload from the heavy things i've been reading lately.
or it could be that i'm feeling particularly sappy, whatever the reason is, i think this is one of my new favorite chicklit books EVER.
poor little megan smith, yale graduate, is up to her ears in debt, she's living in new york, she's got a boyfriend and a roommate and then her apartment goes up in smoke.
literally.
so she ends up in palm beach with the odd job of getting two twin socialites, who make lindsay lohan look like a partypooper, into duke.
on their own. no buying their way in, not entirely, anyway.
it's classically cheesy and surprisingly has depth where you don't expect, i would say it's this season's sitelink Berdorf Blondes, but that isn't quite the same thing.
there isn't as much label/name dropping as seems to be necessary to qualify for nyc chicklit, and i have to say, it was kind of refreshing.
it was just light and easy and most of all, FUN, and i finished it in a couple of hours.
i'm happily impressed with dean's jump from yalit to chicklit though this really teeters on the borders of both.
flirtinis and champagne all around, I read this book because it was on my TBR list I forgot how I found out about it, and I was craving some chick lit.
I thought the storyline was great, but the time frame wasn't long enough, Megan realistically wouldn't have been able to go through that many changes in just nine weeks.
Parts of it didn't feel very realistic,
The author made a lot of references to pop culture, things that celebrities had done in the last year or two.
Although I enjoyed them, I don't think they'll hold the same meaning over time, Stereotypical, but good. SO DIFFERENT FROM THE TV SHOW, Which is a good thing, because this was pretty terrible, And even though it was meant to be all moralistic about reverse snobbery, the book ended up being all reverse reverse snobbery.
If that makes any sense, And Marcus was the biggest gay fairygodmother stereotype ever,
There was a twisty bit at the very end that I liked, and I enjoyed all the fake SAT questions.
But I do not think that is enough for me to give it more than one star.
Also, I wanted to read Megan's article! I think it was a total copout that we didn't get to read that! This is a book for older teens andsomethings.
I found it on my daughters shelf,
A recent Yale graduate with,in loans is having trouble finding a decent job, She works at a trash tabloid writing, well trash, Then she gets an offer she cant refuse a job tutoringspoiled brat teenagers, All she has to do is get them to score an SAT score that will get them in Duke.
An impossible task!
Great literature its not, Raunchy it is. But it is funny, entertaining and heartwarming, One of those you cant judge a book by its cover stories, Like Mary Kay Andrews foryear olds, I'm not sure what I thought of this, I was thinking it was ok until I realized how many things were there that I don't like in books: bad language, sex mostly just in the beginning, the main character pretending to be someone she isn't and lying.
I did like how she owned up to things in the end and even matured a bit.
Trebuie sa ajungi până aproape de final pentru ati da seama ca este o carte bună.
Mia plăcut mult! Okay, so I've liked some chicklit in the past, what can I say But maybe I am growing out of this phase because i just thought this book was nothing specialsame old story: girl is a journalist, has a boyfriend, lives in NYC, something bad happensshe's thrown into a crazy predicament oh no!, she's attracted to another guy besides her boyfriend what to do!, but in the end everything turns out okay, she gets the right guy, all her debts are paid off or she's got the dream job/life, etc.
all with detailed descriptions of clothes worn, parties attended, drinks drunk, and don't forget the quirky best friend!
In case you can't tell, I am so over chick lit! Nu mă așteptam, dar chiar mia plăcut mult.
Are un deznodământ care era de așteptat, însă restul cărții e chiar super.
Are o temă aproximativ realistă, ceea ce este benefic, Miar fi plăcut o descoasere mai amănunțită a părții sentimentale a gemenelor, însă și al trecutului lor.
Dar, per total, e o carte super, foarte ușor de citit, pentru care merită săți rupi o bucată din timp.
Megan Smith graduated from Yale with a prestigious journalism degree, but the only job she can find in New York City is with the gossip magazine Scoop.
But Megan can't seem to get the hang of tabloidstyle journalism, so her boss fires her.
Fortunately for Megan, her boss is friends with the owner of a cosmetics company who has been raising her twin granddaughters.
Megan is offered the position of tutoring the seventeenyearold fireballs, Sage and Rose Baker, in Palm Beach, Florida.
In exchange for the girls receiving decent grades in school, a decent score on the SATs, and getting into Duke, Megan will receive a salary and at the end, her,college debt will be paid off.
How hard could it be
Well, Megan soon figures out that her task is near impossible.
The girls are set to inherit millions of dollars and have no interest in college or studying.
They find Megan unstylish, unsophisticated, and unworthy of their attention, Megan discovers that in order to accomplish her goal, she has to take some lessons of her own from Sage and Rose first.
How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls is an enjoyable book, Those who like Dean's AList series, but want to move along to a book that has more adult themes, will devour this new offering.
It's total fun to be immersed in the world of the rich and famous, and doing it through the eyes of normal Megan will make readers even more a part of the story.
At the beginning, Rose and Sage are merciless with Megan, They change their ways a little too quickly to be believable, but it doesn't really detract from the story.
For a summer beachtype read, How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls fits the bill and then some.
Parties with the rich, shopping, and romance on the beach make for a deliciously fluffy read.
It's actually ridiculous how long this book was on my TBR list for! I'd literally wanted to read it ever since the series Privileged came out! The girls are so so so spoiled, but they did come around although it's a bit unrealistic how quickly it was! In all honesty, I didn't like the way Megan lied so much, but I get why she felt she had to.
I do think that the TV series is superior, but I'd really love a sequel of this book, to find out what happens to Megan, as well as Rose and Sage how does Rose get on in college Does Sage end up joining her Does Megan keep in touch with the girls Before reading this book, I had just read two books that were both very serious and dealt with heavy subject matters which had left me feeling a bit drained.
After finishing those books I needed something light and fluffy and perk me back up a bit and as I was a fan of the show that was based on this book, I figured it would be a safe bet.
I was definitely right. This was the book equivalent of candy floss, It was light, fluffy, colourful, sweet, and fun, with little substance,
I will admit that I definitely preferred the show, The show, I believe if memory serves, it's been a while since I watched it, had a slightly longer timeline which made a lot more sense.
The short timeline was part of this books downfall as it was just too unrealistic, The twins and Megan went through these huge, miraculous changes in the space of two months I can suspend my disbelief but it still felt like an absurdly short time to allow yourself to have in the story.
The characters were actually a lot more fleshed out in the show than in the book and that's something I'm not sure I've ever actually seen before, usually it's the other way around.
Megan was less likeable in the book, which may have been because we saw her thoughts and therefore saw just how judgemental she was of everyone around her.
She gets upset and annoyed at how much the twins judge her but she judges them before she's even met them and then continues to judge them as much as they judge her.
The twins weren't actually too bad, Apart from one mean prank on her first night with them, they never really felt quite mean enough to warrant everything she said about them and the article that she was initially going to write about them.
The twins were also a lot more likeable in the series, though, In the book, the twins' changes and character development was also way too rushed due largely to the short time period that was given to the characters.
I just don't understand why the author didn't make the amount of time longer, She wrote the book, the time period was under her control, why not make it a few more months to allow yourself to progress them more naturally
I had a couple of other gripes, I didn't like the way Marcus was used as a gay ex machina and I also didn't like the fact that there were a quite a few slut shaming digs towards Sage.
I didn't like Megan's original boyfriend, as we were clearly supposed to, but I also didn't particularly take to Will either so hey ho.
The book was very predictable and the fact I've seen the show wasn't a factor in this at all.
The show was very different so the stories, besides the basic premise of poor girl goes to tutor rich twins, are nothing alike.
Yet I still knew where it was going from the start,
However, despite all the things I didn't like about it, The book did exactly what I wanted it to do, Mindlessly entertain me. I was definitely entertained and I actually did have a lot of fun reading it, I guess I've always been a bit of a sucker for rich teen dramas, as my guilty pleasures always seem to prove to me yes, I'm looking directly at you, Gossip Girl.
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