Bright Young Things by Anna Godberson
Feb. 5th, 2011 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreLeaving behind turn of the century New York, Anna Godberson sets her sites on 1929 New York, full of bootleggers, lost heiresses, flappers, and probably aviators before long.
The night of Cordelia’s shotgun wedding, best friends Cordelia and Letty leave their small town for New York City, Letty with the aim of becoming a star, and Cordelia to find her father, who is now a rich an infamous bootlegger. They separate after a fallout (one that makes little sense, IMO) soon after their arrival, and Letty becomes a flapper and catches the attention of the son of a Broadway director, and Cordelia meets her father and befriends her half-brother, Charlie’s, fiancee, Astrid who is starting to realize her relationship with Charlie isn’t as perfect as she thought.
Godberson basically packs an entire season’s worth of Drama into just under 400 pages, with secrets, forbidden romances, betrayals, and Dramatic Reveals, all over the place. Like Godberson’s The Luxe books, it relies largely on whether Godberson’s slightly-jaded embracing of the romanticized ideal of the period annoys you, or if you get swept up in it (or are me, and are just entertained by the Drama and all the historical girls running around and not quite behaving). Though, if it follows the precedent set by The Luxe, the romanticism will eventually have reality crash in on many characters.
I don’t think I enjoyed this quite as much as I did Godberson’s first book, but I liked it, and look forward to the rest.
The night of Cordelia’s shotgun wedding, best friends Cordelia and Letty leave their small town for New York City, Letty with the aim of becoming a star, and Cordelia to find her father, who is now a rich an infamous bootlegger. They separate after a fallout (one that makes little sense, IMO) soon after their arrival, and Letty becomes a flapper and catches the attention of the son of a Broadway director, and Cordelia meets her father and befriends her half-brother, Charlie’s, fiancee, Astrid who is starting to realize her relationship with Charlie isn’t as perfect as she thought.
Godberson basically packs an entire season’s worth of Drama into just under 400 pages, with secrets, forbidden romances, betrayals, and Dramatic Reveals, all over the place. Like Godberson’s The Luxe books, it relies largely on whether Godberson’s slightly-jaded embracing of the romanticized ideal of the period annoys you, or if you get swept up in it (or are me, and are just entertained by the Drama and all the historical girls running around and not quite behaving). Though, if it follows the precedent set by The Luxe, the romanticism will eventually have reality crash in on many characters.
I don’t think I enjoyed this quite as much as I did Godberson’s first book, but I liked it, and look forward to the rest.