Brooklyn Girls by Gemma Burgess
| Brooklyn Girls by Gemma Burgess | |
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| Category: Women's Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Robert James
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| Summary: Brilliant New Adult novel about a fantastically well-portrayed group of friends looks set to be the start of a great series. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 352 | Date: July 2013 |
| Publisher: Quercus | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1782067337 | |
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22-year-old Pia Keller has screwed up again. She should be living the dream, sharing a Brooklyn townhouse with her four best friends - but one too many drunken escapades leads to her getting sacked from her new job. After hearing this, her parents are ready to summon her to live with them abroad. They clearly don't think she's mature enough to look after herself - can she prove them wrong?
This is going to be the first in a series of books, apparently. I'm presuming there'll be five - the next one is called Brooklyn Girls: Angie so I take it there'll be one for each of the five friends if we're lucky - and the good news is that I'd be ready to preorder the other four right now if I had the option. Burgess has created five really interesting characters here and I enjoyed the relationships between the quintet, which I found to be very realistic, as was Pia's frustrated, distant relationship with her parents. It's also a very quick read thanks to Burgess's fast-paced and hugely entertaining writing style.
Brooklyn Girls is about the third or fourth New Adult book I've read. For those of you who aren't aware of the genre/category (fierce debates break out occasionally over which it is, if anything!) it's been dismissed by some people as Young Adult with sexy bits shoved in. Brooklyn Girls - as do other standard-bearers for New Adult books, like Easy by Tammara Webber - shows that it has the potential to be so much more than that. As you'd expect from a book about five girls living in New York, all of whom like partying, there's some sex, drink, drugs and swearing here, but none of it's particularly explicit and if anything the Warning: Adult content on the back of the book doesn't feel particularly necessary. I'd be happy to recommend it to older teens as well as the target audience - in fact, while it's never preachy, it could be seen as a cautionary tale for them.
So if New Adult's not just teen fiction with added sex, what is it? I think it's mainly focusing on people who are legally adults - with all the rights and responsibilities that entails - but not quite comfortable in that role yet. Brooklyn Girls, as the tagline Who knew adulthood would be so damn grown-up? sums that up perfectly.
It doesn't do everything perfectly, admittedly. The romance part feels a bit tagged on, to be honest, and the last few pages seemed relatively weak because of that. The 'proper' climax of the story, however, before this, is well done, and overall this is a definite recommendation and a series I'll look forward to continuing with.
I think fans of this one would definitely love Easy by Tammara Webber.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Brooklyn Girls by Gemma Burgess at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Brooklyn Girls by Gemma Burgess at Amazon.com.
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