52 Reasons to Hate My Father by Jessica Brody ISBN: 9780374323035
Published by Macmillan on July 3, 2012
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult
Pages: 340
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Being America's favorite heiress is a dirty job...but someone's gotta do it.
Lexington Larrabee has never had to work a day in her life. After all, she's the heiress to the multi-billion-dollar Larrabee Media empire. And heiresses are not supposed to work. But then again, they're not supposed to crash brand-new Mercedes convertibles into convenience stores on Sunset Boulevard either.
Which is why, on Lexi's eighteenth birthday, her ever-absent, tycoon father decides to take a more proactive approach to her wayward life. Every week for the next year, she will have to take on a different low-wage job if she ever wants to receive her beloved trust fund. But if there's anything worse than working as a maid, a dishwasher, and a fast-food restaurant employee, it's dealing with Luke, the arrogant, albeit moderately attractive, college intern her father has assigned to keep tabs on her.
In Jessica Brody's hilarious "comedy of heiress" about family, forgiveness, good intentions, and best of all, second chances, Lexi learns that love can be unconditional, money can be immaterial, and regardless of age, everyone needs a little saving. And although she might have fifty-two reasons to hate her father, she only needs one reason to love him.
Characters: 6, Lexi and her father are more developed as characters than Luke and just about everyone else in the story. But I wouldn’t call them complex, realistic, or really well-developed. The secondary characters range from Plot Device to One Trait Personality. Of course, this is a contemporary, fluffy YA novel so I didn’t really expect them to be.
Atmosphere: 7, maybe it’s because I actually lived in LA for a time, but I had no problem picturing everything from the mansions with a gated entrance and manicured grounds to the cracked-window graffitied Inglewood apartment to the Filiberto’s-esque fast food joint. There was definitely humor with the fish-out-of-water scenes, and even though I pretty much hated shrieky, spoiled toddler-attitude Lexi at the start (as the reader is meant to), that humor kept me immersed in the story until I could genuinely care about her enough to want to keep reading.
Writing: 7, the writing style was fun, the pacing was good, and it was the kind of fluff it purported to be, which I appreciate. There were a couple of scenes that pulled my nitpicky brain out (like Luke putting a hand on Lexi’s shoulder while also having an empty champagne glass in one hand a plate in the other so I guess he has three hands?). But for the most part, it flowed smoothly and was contemporary without the character dialogue being unrealistically snappy.
Plot: 8, the pacing was good and the plot was nice in that the primary focus was Lexi’s journey (the romance was a B plot, which I prefer). There weren’t any big twists, but it was definitely a YA take on women’s fiction, with a growth-and-family tale.
Intrigue: 7, I was stuck at home with a very sick dog and needed a total mental distraction, so it’s tough to say how much of this keeping my attention was the book and how much was my running away from stress. That said, I did tend to read large chunks of it in each sitting, and I couldn’t have done that without being at least a bit invested.
Logic: 7, the world building was pretty clear and based on our pop culture understanding of the very wealthy. Each character acted in accordance with their motive, even when we the audience couldn’t fully understand said motive except in hindsight.
Enjoyment: 8, all in all I did enjoy it and enjoyed it pretty consistently. It didn’t blow me away, but I’d likely read another fluffy YA by this author.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
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