I don’t know if you can see it, but in the bottom inset, the guy to Carrie’s left (in the sailor hat (?) is a bit stocky and I like that. I don’t know what my twelve year old self thought of him at the time. At that age my idea of male perfection was the Nelson twins. That explains a lot. I’m surprised I’m not a lesbian, because I loved feminine looking guys (Sebastian Bach, pre-bloat Bret Michaels, etc etc)
In Sunset Island, you know what kind of plot you are getting depending on the narrator. With Emma, it’s always about being a poor little rich girl and breaking up and making up with Kurt; with Sam it’s always about being an attention whore and not having sex; with Carrie it’s always some social justice issue. And her hottie rockstar boyf, Billy.
Ahhhhhh!!!! Mention of the perfect size six! What is it with that number? Carrie is self-c0nscious because she is “curvaceous” and not a size six like Sam or Emma. Carrie is maybe a size 10. The horror! I am getting so sick of writing size 6 in this blog.
So anyway, some plot. Carrie meets an old rich Ms. Spencer-Ramsey at the Winterhaven estate. She finds out that Carrie is a photographer, and asks her to help her with a book project (probably to end up as a bargain coffee table book). She wants preety pics of Sunset Island, and as Carrie goes to take them, she realizes that Sunset Island has poor people who are ignored by the rich, seasonal beach-house renters that she and her friends work for. Of course Kurt, poster-child for the working class, shows her the way. Ms. S-R wants to hear nothing of it, but Carrie displays the pics of the shacks at her gallery opening anyway. And then some protest group shows up. And Carrie and the gang save the poor people from a flood. I don’t know. And then…I am not sure what happens because in the next book they are off at the beach club again.
Ian Templeton’s Lord Whitehead and the Zitmen continue to grow musically as a band. They actually mention doing covers of David Bowie’s “Suffragette City” or a Dead Kennedeys song! I’m impressed that this was even mentioned in the same book with a band called Flirting with Danger!
Stop with the social consciousness, Cherie, and more clothes shopping and boyfriends. Sheesh!
LOL, I am still into guys who look like that! (Though you should also refer to pre- and post-bloat Sebastian Bach.) That said, I also love more hirsute types like David Lee Roth… in one of the Barthes de Clements (sp?) books, I think “Nothing’s Fair in Fifth Grade,” one of the characters receives a Van Halen album as a birthday gift, and one of the girls is all, “Couldn’t you just imagine running your fingers through his chest hair?” The narrator of course is like “ew, no” and then thinks about how she prefers Eddie Van Halen.
Does it say which Dead Kennedys song they cover? It could potentially add a whole other layer to the “discovering the poor” plot. Or Cherie could have just chosen them at random after some kind of pre-Google search (I’m not even sure how that would work — like, asking around?) of what the kids are “into” these days.
Lord Whitehead and the Zitmen is one of the best band names I ever did hear.
At that age my idea of male perfection was the Nelson twins.
That made my day.
Would someone tell me in which universe that model on the cover is a size 10?
She could be really really tall. ^_^
I’ve always wondered… are the perfect sizes for teen books nowadays size 0? Or maybe a size 2?
These covers are so ridiculous :p
Her camara lens looks kinda dirty!!
Whoops :0, I mean camera!
Re: Shannon River/perfect sizes in new books…
In Gossip Girl, the main chars (Serena and Blair) are size 4.
In The A-List, two of the main chars (Anna and Cammie) are either a 2 or a 4, Dee is a size 0, and Sam (who they always describe as heavy and generally not attractive) is a size 8 in the earlier books, then a 10.
Mercifully, in The Clique they don’t mention their clothing sizes (aside from cup size — soo weird, all the books now do this with really specific bra sizes. So we know that Massie’s an A and Alicia’s a C).
I know in The It Girl, they mention a bunch of times that the character Callie is a 0 or a 2, but unlike in The A-List, the other chars are often concerned about it, so it’s more mentioned like, “she’s looking really thin” and their concern than she might have an eating disorder or sthg. I don’t remember them saying sizes of other chars. The main girl, Jenny, is often described as tiny except for her breasts (34DD), but it’s more meant to describe that she’s only five feet tall.
But yes — looking over what I just typed, nary a 6 in the bunch.
Also, I’m embarrassed I know all this! What crucial facts are being pushed out of my brain to make room for knowing the clothing sizes of a bunch of girls who don’t actually exist? *sigh*
“I am getting so sick of writing size 6 in this blog.”
Perhaps you should assign the phrase”size 6″ it’s very own function key so as to save yourself from all forms of Repetitive Stress Syndrome, ihatewheat.
“What crucial facts are being pushed out of my brain to make room for knowing the clothing sizes of a bunch of girls who don’t actually exist? ”
It’s part of your research, Tiny Pants!
“”size 6″ it’s
Blech. That should be “size 6″ its — no contraction necessary…
I only read one A-List novel (I was so ashamed to be taking it out of the library), but I felt pretty ‘WTF’ about that Sam girl being described as “big” as a size 8. These A-List girls would probably die if they saw pre-diet Robin Wilson.
“I only read one A-List novel (I was so ashamed to be taking it out of the library)”
Alicia E. — This is what stops me from checking these out. Yeah, yeah, I know that librarians are notoriously vigilant in respecting and protecting the privacy rights of their patrons…but these ones all know me professionally and know that YA isn’t my area!