Starstruck by Cyn Balog - Advanced Copy

The Gist

Starstruck
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Gwendolyn Reilly just got the worst news of her life.  Her boyfriend is coming back from California.  The problem there?  He has gotten incredibly hot since she last saw him three years ago, and she has gotten - well - fat.  Her nickname, Dough, is accurate.  Wish, her boyfriend, has no idea that the girl he left as a best friend and starting dating over email has gained seventy pounds and is ostracized at school for being poor and fat.  It doesn't help Dough that her mom owns a bakery, and she works there.  Who could resist all the baked confections?  Dough's sister Evie can't either, though Evie stays stick-skinny, which isn't fair.  Dough isn't ready for Wish to come back, isn't ready to start junior year, and isn't ready for the new hired help in the bakery, a convict-looking boy named Christian.  But, she starts to learn, nothing is what it appears on the surface.  


What We Think
Reviewed by Living Destiny
Number of Pages: 244
The entire 244 pages of this book, I was thinking one thing.  STOP COMPLAINING!!!  The main character, Dough, is always complaining.  Reading almost turned into the Charlie-Brown-adult-voice in my head.  Whine whine I'm fat whine whine I'm poor whine whine no one likes me whine whine.  Guess who happens to especially hate whiny people?  Me.  I can not tolerate people who complain about their lives (or anything really) but don't do anything to fix it.  Just change it or shut up!  Nope, Dough liked to complain a lot, but really didn't do too much to remedy her weight situation.  She just gradually grew to be not as bothered by it.  But she was still fat at the end.  
The plot of this book was sort of...muddled.  It was almost like there were two different attempts at plot smushed into one book.  It was confusing, and not paced out well.  Most of the action was in the last seventy-ish pages, and the whole beginning was filled with typical teenage fluff.  Boring, typical teenage fluff.  The author tried to make Dough the poor outcast who tries to fit in with the popular crowd, but it didn't work well.  The popular crowd was so stereotypical they came off as flat.  Speaking of characters, I hated very nearly all of them.  Dough was whiny and annoying.  Wish, the boyfriend, was really fake.  I know he was supposed to seem that way, but he was so fake.  If I actually knew a person like that...well it wouldn't be pretty for them.  Evie, the sister, was naive, but also rude, which is a weird combination.  The only character I actually liked was Christian, and I still can't tell if I genuinely liked him or if he was just the only one I didn't totally hate.  He was creepy and sarcastic, but very intelligent.  Huh, maybe I did actually like him.  Yes, ok, so I liked Christian.  But that was literally it.  Everyone else made me cringe a little bit.  
At least the writing was good.  That saved this book from total fail-dom.  Cyn Balog is a witty individual, or at least her writing is witty.  I found myself giggling at some of the lines.  I mean, some of them were trying to be funny and just weren't, but some of them were genuinely funny.  I know I have a funny sense of humor, so I'm thinking that you have to appreciate heavy sarcasm to find this book even the least bit funny, because that's what I laughed at.  But it is funny.  It was boring, confusing, and blah, but it had wit.  Woo-hoo!  Note the sarcasm.  My favorite use of the English language ever, although irony is a close second.  
I have to talk about the first and last lines.  They are the most important part of the book.  The first line sets the tone, and the last line wraps it all up.  Technically, the first line of this book is 'HEY!', but that's in an obnoxiously capitalized email from Wish to Dough that is placed right before the first chapter, so I don't count that.  Which is good because that would be a very strange first line, and I don't think it could be considered strange in a good way.  So the real first line is 'For the first time in four years, I've lost my appetite.'  Way to set the fat girl tone early.  There isn't even some introductory part before pointing out her extra weight.  It's the very beginning.  Open the book and BAM I'M FAT!  Yow.  Already, I don't care.  Not a good first line.  The last line is 'Lacing our fingers together, we race breathlessly toward the school, on the wind, like two crazy people, two kindred spirits, laughing all the way.'  Well, I lost interest after the second comma.  And really, it could have ended at the second comma.  The rest is nice and all, but it's kind of overkill.  Too much description in one sentence.  I guess the story itself wrapped up ok, but it left a couple things hanging, and in a book that plans to stand alone and not be a series, it needs to be totally finished.  I don't want to finish a book and wonder what happens next if I never get to know.  If I wanted to tell myself a story, I would have pulled out my notebook, not your published work of fiction.  
This was the fat girl book.  That's what I called it, because I honestly couldn't remember the name, and it just seemed to fit.  It was about a whiny fat girl.  Surprisingly, I didn't hate it too as much as I thought I might from the first few chapters, but I certainly didn't love it.  It was just sort of there.  At least the cover art is cool looking.

Real Teen Rating~ C-: Read it if you're bored.