really quite good ( )

Spoiled was a snarky, amusing novel at first, but the second time, my opinion changed.

This novel reminds me The Clique series. Molly, similar to Claire Lyons, moves to a new place where she gets tormented by the fabulous rich girl Brooke. In this case, Molly and Brooke turn out to be half-sisters.

Molly is a bland character. She has no interesting aspects of her personality. Claire does. Claire likes photography, candies, wearing Keds and Gap clothing and overall sensitive girl who desires to be fabulous as Massie. What's fascinating about Molly other than she's the daughter of a movie actor? Nothing. The novel hinted she likes running, but she never tried out for track. Her dull personality was hard to root for no matter how hard the authors tried.

Brooke in the other hand, is sassy, self-conceited, glamorous girl with a dark secret. She has an absent mother, whom she writes every day, but never sends. She wants to become like her father. When Molly arrives, Brooke becomes extremely competitive towards her. All she wants is to make her father proud, especially since she's the director of the school production My Fair Lady.

Other than the sharp-tongued quotes and Argula, Brooke's best friend who is Tyra Bank's doppelganger, Spoiled is another book about Hollywood with no surprising elements.

Read The Clique series by Lisi Harrison. The quotes and characters are more memorable and snarkier. ( )

2.5 Stars ( )

I really enjoyed the authors' The Royal We and was intrigued by their YA books they had previously published. Not terribly surprisingly, this is nothing like the 450+ page tome of the epic romance of Rebecca Porter and Prince Nicolas. Instead, this is definitely a YA tale, short yet still manages to not be complete fluff.

Cocks and Morgan, through the story of Brooke Berlin and her newly discovered half-sister Molly Dix, show just how utterly shallow and vapid Hollywood is. It's a pretty predictable storyline but it was still fun to read. One thing that I wanted--and this is true for many YA novels, particularly contemporary YA novels, which seem to be written deliberately short and sweet--is more pages. I wanted more plot, more depth, characterization, etc. As it was, it was a fun story. If it had been longer and the authors allowed the space to fully flesh out the story and the characters--given what they accomplished with 100 more pages in The Royal We--would have been spectacular. ( )

I was so surprised by how much I liked this book. Well, I knew I'd "like" it - because I know the authors' other work and love it. But I really LOVED it. The characters and story was more developed than I thought it would be. But still light-hearted and fun. I would recommend this to ANYONE as a summer read. ( )