Epic Fail

Author : Claire LaZebnik

Genre Young Adult, Romance

Publisher : HarperTeen

Year : 2011

Ranking: 3.5/ 5

Synopsis

At Coral Tree Prep in Los Angeles, who your parents are can make or break you.

Case in point:

As the son of Hollywood royalty, Derek Edwards is pretty much prince of the school--not that he deigns to acknowledge many of his loyal subjects.

As the daughter of the new principal, Elise Benton isn't exactly on everyone's must-sit-next-to-at-lunch list.

When Elise's beautiful sister catches the eye of the prince's best friend, Elise gets to spend a lot of time with Derek, making her the envy of every girl on campus. Except she refuses to fall for any of his rare smiles and instead warms up to his enemy, the surprisingly charming social outcast Webster Grant. But in this hilarious tale of fitting in and flirting, not all snubs are undeserved, not all celebrity brats are bratty, and pride and prejudice can get in the way of true love for only so long.

The Author

Claire Scovell LaZebnik is an American novelist/author. She is the wife of American television writer Rob LaZebnik, with whom she has four children. She is also the sister of television writer Nell Scovell and of children's book writer Alice Scovell Coleman.

Her novels include Same as It Never Was, Knitting Under the Influence, and The Smart One and the Pretty One. She has co-written two books on autism with Dr. Lynn Koegel of the Koegel Autism Research Center at the University of California at Santa Barbara. In the first, Overcoming Autism, she writes at the end of each chapter about her son, who was diagnosed with autism at age two and a half. In the second, Growing up on the Spectrum (2009), the everyday issues of adolescents with autism are addressed.

Personal Experience with This Book

First I want to be clear about the fact that I have not read Pride and Prejudice before. And I want to clarify that because this book is exactly a remake of the famous novel written by Jane Austen. So, having said that I will be clear that this review will not contain any comparison between both of them and therefore I cannot judge it as many of other people have done saying that that book is a bad copy of it.

I read this book in a day. It has around 270 pages so I was not that long to begin with. I have positive as well as negative points of the story. I would say it is a very cliché story where Elise, our protagonist, falls in love with Derek, the most popular guy at school, while Derek falls in love with Elise but do not know how to express it and for some reason they always end up fighting about insignificant things. But, at the end they finally are honest with their feelings and end up together.  

I liked the way the romance between them is always in between love and hatred. I have to say that I have always liked this kind of stories where the two main characters fall in love after hating each other. Moreover, there are Chase (Derek’s best friend) and Julianna (Elise’s older sister), which for me were even more interesting as a couple. They were just so lovely, reading about them I felt I was back at High School. So cute.

Apart from that… I would not say the story is pretty good. There is no drama, not suspense, nothing that makes you feel like you want to keep reading to know what is going to happen next. Nothing.

Dereck has some personal and family problems which keeps him fighting with Elise at the beginning but then, he realizes that the best thing he can do if he really wants her by his side is to tell her the truth. This itself makes the story boring… I know many people here would say “But when writers give too much of drama and problems to the plots they get annoying”, and that is true. But then if the writer just give you little of it, the story becomes boring and makes it so normal that nobody would want to read it.

The only dramatic thing that happened in the story was a problem with Elise’s younger sister. But at the end what seemed so cool, ended in such a way that you would feel angry about it… at least if my sister does something like that I will actually kill her! (Not literally but… you know what I mean).

So… you could say the story is pretty much down to earth… like nothing really special happen at the end but reality is most of the times like that so, what can you do about it? I won’t say I did not enjoy the book but I won’t recommend it to everyone… if one day you are bored and have nothing to do and do not have anything else to read, then read this book. 

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