Nessa Joanne Mulholland, aka Marilyn Monroe's No. 1 teenage fan, is used to moving house. This time, however, she's relocating in movie-star style - crossing the Atlantic on board the Majestic, headed for Paris from New York City. And it really would be in movie-star style if it wasn't for the fact that she's bringing her cringe-fest professor dad along for the ride. (Dad's specialisation: human mating rituals - need Nessa say more?) Oh yeah, and sharing a cabin that's five decks below sea level and next to the engine room. Still, at least Holly Isles is on board. Yes, really, that Holly Isles - star of stage, screen and – DVD. Suddenly, things are looking up. Looking a little Marilyn, in fact, because events are strangely mirroring Nessa's favourite movie of all time, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Watch!
As Holly Isles, world-famous actress, confides in Nessa over mocktails.
Listen!
As Nessa coaches Holly in the amazing 'Nessa's Lessons in Love' - the ultimate man-catching rules to finding true and lasting lurv.
See!
Nessa fall for Holly's too-cute nephew, Marc.
And – cover your eyes!
As it all goes terribly, horribly, embarrassingly wrong.
There's no doubting it. This is going to be one pitchy crossing.
Received as a free ARC from NetGalley.
Diamonds Are a Teen’s Best Friend is one of those books that
seems like it should be for younger people (maybe classified as a middle-grade
book instead of young adult) but it’s really not. I mean it could be, but it’s not dumbed-down
like a lot of middle-grade books tend to be when dealing with some of the
issues this one does.
There are a lot of clever things about this book. Of course there’s the whole thing with Nessa’s
obsession with Marilyn Monroe, and the acknowledgement that it might be that
she just wants a ‘friend’ who can stay with her while she and her father travel
around the world so much. And Nessa’s
point of view was, for the most part, pretty entertaining. She’s overly-naïve, though, and it becomes
irritating when she misses obvious things that the reader got a long time ago.
There are also things here and there that the author seems
to just skip over. For instance, when
the book says Nessa and Marc had become friends, I’m just sitting here thinking
“When?” It’s not even that anything was skipped over; because the cruise is
several days, rather than the book taking place over the span of a few months
for instance, the time skips aren’t that long.
And it’s not even that Nessa just assumes they’re friends; Marc is
really disappointed in her when he finds out about the whole Nessa’s Lessons in
Love thing and says he thought she was better than that. It’s a weakness in the book that tugs it away
from being as good as it might have been.
Despite that the book is pretty good, something I’d
recommend to others without hesitation.
So happy reading!
