Beneath the Glitter by Elle and Blair Fowler

Pic Cred: Goodreads.com

From Internet stars Elle and Blair Fowler comes a scintillating new novel that takes readers Beneath the Glitter of the glitzy L.A. social scene.
 Welcome to a place where dreams are made.  And where nothing—and no one—is ever what it seems.
 After their make-up and fashion videos went viral on YouTube, sisters Sophia and Ava London are thrust into the exclusive life of the Los Angeles elite.  Here fabulous parties, air kisses, paparazzi and hot guys all come with the scene. Sophia finds herself torn between a gorgeous bartender and a millionaire playboy, and Ava starts dating an A-list actor.  But as they’re about to discover, the life they’ve always dreamed of comes with a cost.
 Beneath the glitter of the Hollywood social scene lies a world of ruthless ambition, vicious gossip…and betrayal.  Someone close to them, someone they trust, is working in the shadows to bring the London sisters falling down. And once the betrayal is complete, Sophia and Ava find themselves knee-deep in a scandal that could take away everything they care about, including the one thing that matters most—each other. Courtesy of Goodreads.com 
  

I got into this book by recommendation of a friend. I would be lying if I said I did not know a thing about the two sisters, as I have been following them for years.

Back to the review itself. It is best to put it this way. I was disappointed to a point. Although I did not expect the sisters to be Cecilia Ahern or Nora Roberts, yet I was disappointed.

Where do I begin…

Beneath the Glitter start at the end or almost at the end then it goes back five months before the event itself. Yet the book lacks background and leverage. It almost seems like the book is just a fan fiction from a teenage girl who is not a native speaker to begin with. As a fan fiction writer myself, I’m not saying that all fan fictions lacks quality but this resembles ones that was written by writers who just started.

The book revolves around the two sister’s life within a short 5 months. Yet, there were quite a number of loopholes and also mistakes here and there (although I blame the editors for the mistakes) and the book needs a huge character development. It has a lot of interesting characters in it, yet the characters are just that. It has no history, no background and no structure to it.

Not only the characters resemble the sisters physically but it seems like their personality are very much alike as well (not that I know the girls personally but from their video). Girls seriously, if you want to write about yourself, write a biography.

Besides the main character, the supporting characters felt like they were popping out of nowhere and being skipped like they were not even there in the first place. I supposed there are many authors who write blindly creating characters to accompany their main characters but for the case of this book, it felt more like the characters were created so that they can get away from an obvious writers block.

Another thing that annoys me to the point that I felt like bashing the editor’s computer was the paragraphs that were written in capital letters. I know they are excited, but isn’t there a better way to show your excitement?

Though this book is not 100% pure and utterly crap, there are some nice things about it too. These two authors are good at promoting and also describing beauty products. Although at first it was a little annoying, but it is what they do. I do like the “LonDOs and LonDON’Ts”. Given, they are good at giving opinion about beauty products and fashionable things.

I do like a good written book with a sequel, but for this one I might just pass. The second book came out a couple of months back and I have seen it in a few stores here (I’m in Japan, they don’t carry much English book here unless they are good ones) but I think I’ll just skip it for now.

This being the authors’ debut book, I’d give them fair 1.5 out of 5 (1.5/5) stars just for their courage to put the book out there for the world to read. I do adore the sisters’ beauty video and I do still watch them, but that does not mean I have to like everything they like or do.

XOXO

GWRL