India's Summer by Therese
This story I didn't think I would like. I was wrong. I LOVED it and can't wait to read more.
India in England, Annabelle in CA are twin sisters and India travels to be with her sister one summer.
What she finds when she arrives is amazing to her, so many things to see and do and experience. There is SO much that is over the top for me as I do not follow celebrities.
The food, fashion, cars and everything just wrap themselves around you as the author is very descriptive. India has tried to reinvent herself in CA by telling others she has the solution to their teens problems.
The problems range from sex to drugs and everything in between. Love the exercises and workshops she has them do as a team. And she even finds a guy to really like her.
Until a taping of her is released and it sends her back to England so ashamed of what came out of the video.
She's got a contract to write her story and love how the ending transpires. So cool.
Love hearing of the charity work, fascinating. Ends with about the author and acknowledgements.
Received this review copy from The Story Plant and this is my honest opinion. ( )

From Lilac Wolf and Stuff

This book is a chick lit novel all the way. I have seen complaints about the product dropping, but I thought it fit. After all, her sister is a movie star AND a rock star's wife. And out there, when you are that wealthy, that stuff is important. And I think Thérèse does a good job making the point about why that's a problem.

India is a high school teacher from England. She comes to LA to visit her sister and figure out what she wants from her life. At first she just wants to see her sister, but then she can't stomach going home to her same dreary job. She wants to help troubled teens, not fill out paperwork.

I like India and her sister, she takes these people that we would only know through the tabloid and makes them human. Granted they are completely out of touch with reality, but they are still people.

I will say there were far too many errors in this book. When I find that many, I think maybe I should just start up my freelance editor business. Can't possibly do any worse than that person did. But it's not the worst I've ever seen and you can get around it.

My final criticism. She would have Annabelle say something and then India would say "we call it" insert phrase "in England." But it would be a phrase I use in my own daily life. I'm from Michigan...born from people who are from Michigan. We are not English, I don't even know any English people. So I would get stuck on those points because either Michigan and England have the exact same phrases, or the author didn't do her homework. It was distracting from the novel.

That being said, I really did enjoy the story and I was rooting for India through the whole book. ( )

A shallow, children’s fairy tale. Pleasant, if simplistic.

I bought the book on recommendation from Sir Ken Robinson, hailing it as a captivating and inspiring story of women’s empowerment. A couple of pages into it turned out it was rather a fairy tale. Los Angeles, California - always sunny, always strolling from one party to another, glamour and luxury, and every paragraph seems to have some clothing brand name included.

The real story was to be about India, who lived 40 years teaching kids in a school in London, wishing for a different life, and in a course of one summer finally getting there - turning her fate to become a renowned specialist on parent-teen behavior, and meeting Prince Charming while she’s at it. Such a big turn in life is all about internal reconstruction of the hero and the book simply makes it too shallow. There’s not nearly enough diving into the soul of India and exploring what she feels and what decisions she makes.

Next to that, the story is simply unlikely - a series of events stripped directly from Cinderella. 12-year-old girls would likely be delighted by the plot and scenery, but for anyone older than that it just reads like a children’s book.

All this isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy the book - it was pleasant to read. But with such an endorsement I was expecting much more than I received. ( )