Star Audio Book Review: Summer and the City (The Carrie Diaries #2) by Candace Bushnell, Read by Jenna Lamia

Hot days, warm nights, designer handbags and stiletto heels. You know what that means? Carrie Bradshaw is back in New York in Candace Bushnell’s Summer and the City: The Carrie Diaries #2. I loved this second novel in the series that gives SATC fans a glimpse at the life of Carrie before she was the glamazon NYC Sex columnist with a fetish for designer anything. I listened to the audio, read by Jenna Lamia, and I felt like I was watching an episode of HBO’s Sex and the City. I really enjoyed this book more than its predecessor, The Carrie Diaries.

Carrie Bradshaw is out of high school, almost 18 and eager to return to the city she loves before heading off to Brown University in the fall. Now that she’s not in high school, Carrie is eager to begin her reign of independence. She finds an apartment to rent with several roommates, revisits with newest friend, Samantha Jones and signs up for a writing class at a local university.  You’ll meet another one of the infamous foursome in Summer and the City when Carrie seeks the advice of a redhead working at an upscale department store.

Samantha invites Carrie along to some of the hottest parties in NYC and before she knows it, Carrie’s part of some of the chicest social circles in town and while also making connections to further her career. In one night she meets new boyfriend, Bernard and a playwright enthusiast named, Bobby, who promises Carrie his loft/studio to perform her play once she finishes it. Excited to get a head start on her writing career, Carrie vows to complete her play if it’s the only thing she does this summer.  Of course, writing is NOT the only thing Carrie does all summer, emerging from her youth as a social butterfly and a few other things you’ll have to listen to or read the book to find out.

You won’t want to miss a second of this audio book. Summer and the City is full of surprises right up to the very end.                                               

                                          4 STARS

Putting on My Lip Gloss #3: Writing Beginnings and Characters from Start to Finish

I have been working on a new writing project for a little over a month now. I started by brainstorming and jotting down a few disjointed ideas, scenarios and characters and then I wrote a very brief outline (that I still fill in from time to time as more information becomes revealed throughout the story that I don’t want to forget). I am at the point now where I am working on a rough draft of the first few chapters, the beginning and one of the main areas of focus in this part of the novel is on character development. I have been scavenging through articles and reference books, gathering tips and ideas for anything and everything I can find on beginnings and characters and I’m once again, amazed at the plethora of information that is available to would-be writers like me.

Two of my favorite websites and blogs have been particularly helpful as of late; namely, the Daily Writing Tips website and the Girlfriends Book Club blog. Daily Writing Tips provides, tips, ideas, suggestions and how-to’s from grammar to writing a great endings and everything in between. Here was a fantastic article on “Opening Lines to Inspire the Start of Your Story”:

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/20-great-opening-lines-to-inspire-the-start-of-your-story/

Girlfriends Book Club was created by women, for women, featuring a different women’s fiction writer’s thoughts every day. In March they did a feature on beginnings in novel writing. Several authors shared their views and advice on openings. Here was the first of many articles that spanned over a week’s worth of writing:

http://girlfriendbooks.blogspot.com/2011/03/beginnings.html

To subscribe to the daily writing tips on the site of the same name, visit:

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/

or to follow the daily writings of some of my favorite authors, check out:

http://girlfriendbooks.blogspot.com/

Other than gathering how-to type information on beginnings and characters, whenever I’m working on my writing, my reading habits begin to change. More specifically, I start to notice things in the literature I read and I start to actively make mental notes (and sometimes physical notes) of the ways in which books approach various elements of fiction. For example, I’ve been reading several women’s fiction books and I’ve noticed how the emphasis on character development has been a major focus of each story. I think this is particularly true for series novels, in which books follow a main character (or a few main characters) over a longer period of time.

Who are some of your favorite characters? Series? Can you think of any memorable first lines? Do you prefer beginnings or endings? I’d love to hear from you!!

Putting on My Lip Gloss is a new series of blog posts that represent my personal thoughts, ideas and general ramblings related to chick lit reading and writing. Every day is an inspiration – I never know where my next post is going to come from, but when it does, I always feel like putting on my lip gloss! Thanks for reading.

Tackle it Tuesday - Sugar and Spice by Lauren Conrad

Sugar and Spice (L.A. Candy #3) by Lauren Conrad

I read the first two books in the L.A. Candy series almost immediately upon their release, in 2009 and 2010. Actually, to be more accurate, I listened to both L.A. Candy and Sweet Little Lies and they went by really fast. When the third and final installment came out, I was only able to obtain an e-book copy via my local library’s media site, Overdrive. Unfortunately, by the time I got around to reading it and was really into it, the lending copy I had borrowed expired out of my Digital Library and I was stuck…back on the waiting list for the next copy…after approx. two weeks and another book I finished along the way…I was finally able to download the e-book, Sugar and Spice.  I was elated to find out that the application on my phone that I used to read Sugar and Spice had actually held my spot in the e-book during the entire waiting period when I had no access to it. (God, I love modern technology!)

Needless to say, Sugar and Spice (LA Candy Series #3) by Lauren Conrad makes for the perfect pick for my first Tackle it Tuesday. Tackle it Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Tasha at Book Obsessed at http://book-obsessed.blogspot.com/. Tackle It Tuesday is a play off of a similar meme of the same name hosted by Janice and Susan at 5 Minutes for Mom.

At the Book Obsessed version of the meme, the idea is to "tackle" books that have been sitting on your shelves collecting dust waiting to be read. Or to "tackle" those you’ve started, but yet to finish because life has gotten in the way. It’s also a way to help encourage Blogger interaction, which is always a plus.

For more, great Daily Meme ideas visit:

http://thedailymeme.com/

This was the first of the L.A. Candy series books that I did not listen to but I still liked it just about the same. In fact, it was a close tie between the first one, L.A. Candy and this last book, Sugar and Spice, as far as which one I liked best. I have a feeling that reading it might have been just the thing to push it over the edge towards being the more favorable of the two – after looking back on the series. As much as I love reality TV queen, Lauren Conrad, I did not find her audio narration of Book 1, L.A. Candy to be one of the Young Adult series. By book 2, I assume LC had proven her right as an “author” and a more established narrator, Cassandra Campbell, took over as the voice of the series, creating a more varied and articulated drama. So in Book 3, Sugar and Spice, I had to use my own imagination to infer the conversations and interactions as they occurred, which, to me, usually makes for a very vivid and satisfying story in its own right, allowing the voices of characters to be open and

Overall, I was really happy with the way the three-part story wrapped up. It didn't seem to end too abruptly nor did it tie up every loose end, allowing the transition and flow of events to seem natural and purposeful. In Sugar and Spice, readers arrive back where we left off on the set of L.A. Candy and in this final season, Jane and Scarlett seem to take on opposite roles as far as their perspectives on the L.A. Candy reality show and their relationships with its producer, Trevor, go. Scarlett has made an agreement with Trevor to become more complacent with the expectations of the show, no matter how incredulous, exaggerated or at times, just blatantly, untrue. In contrast, Jane, who was historically the more agreeable of the two L.A. Candy pop stars, becomes the renegade of the show after stumbling upon a notebook belonging to Trevor. The notebook reveals all his "plans" for their upcoming shows, a devious and twisted play-by-play of all the maneuvers and tactics Trevor intends to use to pit the L.A. Candy stars against one another to increase viewer ratings. The more Jane reads the notebook, the more she vows not to allow herself to be a pawn in Trevor's sick game of her life. She tries to stay one step ahead of him at every scene but as always, the nastiest of Trevor’s tricks are only present in his mind, and even Jane, who has the "other team's playbook" can't prevent or even foresee everything that is about to happen on the set and in her life.

Like the other L.A. Candy novels, Sugar and Spice “spices” things up by throwing in a few added characters to its cast of regulars, this time in the form of Madison Parker's baby sister. Sophie Parker quickly reveals that she’s a girl who knows exactly what she wants and will stop at nothing and for nobody to make sure she gets it. Jane and the other girls are taken aback by this super-mini-me version of Madison and soon realize she might not be who they think she is.

          This final novel in Lauren Conrad's L.A. Candy series proves once and for all that reality TV is full of all the drama, excitement and rehearsal that we expect of it now. Her series makes readers wonder how much of LC's life actually paralleled that of which we saw on TV and it may open the eyes of some fans to the reality of reality TV. This was a quick, yet enjoyable read. I’d recommend to any fan of Lauren Conrad, MTV’s reality TV series and teen/young adult lit. Bring this book to the beach!

 3 STARS