Review: Beneath the Glitter by Elle & Blair Fowler

Beneath the Glitter by Blair Fowler, Elle Fowler
Series: Beneath the Glitter #1
Published by St. Martin's Griffin on September 04th 2012
Pages: 288
Source: Purchased at Coles
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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

Honestly I don’t even know where to start. There is not really a need to rehash what the book is about because it’s exactly what the synopsis is, there’s really nothing else to explain when it comes to plot or summary.

The two main characters are sisters name Sophia and Ava London. Sophia is the oldest and apparently the wisest and Ava is the free spirit younger sister. It also features a variety of different friend(ish) people: Lily-the eccentric girl down the hall, Giovanni-the future telling bartender, Dalton-the seemingly mean dog loving hipster, Liam-the superstar hunk, just to name a few. The story took place in Los Angeles with nothing special happening in the settings. Several famous streets and places were referred to as they always are in books like this and of course the girls were always at the coolest and hottest venues.

I have a cornucopia of issues with this book. First off, I’m just going to say this straight away. This book was more based off their lives it seems than loosely based off their lives as they suggest. Just from watching their videos sporadically on YouTube I can conclude that their were more similarities than not. Even their animals were the same(same little dog for Ava, half deaf cat for Sophia). There looks were the same, the personality traits were the same, they were just sooo similar. Even small things I noticed like Ava gets up so early and Sophia likes to sleep in late. Elle & Blair constantly mention that in their videos. I’m not staying there is anything wrong in telling their story and kudos for them for doing it but it would have been better worded as a story being based on their lives with certain fictional events and characters.

I also hated the advertisements in the Londo’s and Londont’s(which also irked me as well and by the halfway mark I wasn’t even reading them anymore). I hate to refer to their beauty video’s again but a large part of the reason why I only sporadically watch the video’s is due to the fact that they are always promoting random nonsense. It seems like their book was just another way to earn royalties for their companies. They promoted that Cellaris company again and honestly it was a huge disappointment that they would do that in their book as well. Also another random thing that drove me nuts was the constant need for Ava to shout in Caplocks. Was there not another way to get the message across?

As for Ava and Sophia, I actually liked Ava as a character until she got so annoying. When she was acting like an immature brat towards her sister I immediately disliked her and Sophia was just kind of blah. Liam is obviously shady as he is constantly trying to turn the sisters against each other and he drove me nuts as well. There really wasn’t a single character that I completely liked.   The closest would have to be Dalton as he seemed to have a bit of substance until the end, and even still I have no idea where they are going to go with him.

In part for the actual story, it was very predictable until the ending. Of course you can tell who each girl will end up with(in the sequel-which I will get back to) and you could basically tell where each concept was going. The ending in all honestly shocked me. I wasn’t expecting it at all and because of the sudden unpredictability of that, it went up a star in rating. I’m not sure where they plan on taking this in the next novel and for almost the entire book I was certain I would not be picking it up but due to the unpredictable ending I’m going to have to read the sequel just to see where they take it. Speaking of the sequel: I was under the impression this was a stand alone until I flipped through and seen they are advertising for the follow-up.

Beneath the Glitter is just OK. There is nothing special that stands out with it. It’s a light young adult chick lit novel and if you want to read something fluffy this would probably suffice. However to compare it with other’s in the same genre, Lauren Conrad’s series LA Candy is a far better option.