Excellent sequel to the Boyfriend App. What stands out to me is how well the author makes mean girl Blake's behavior and the reasons for it understandable. I suspect a lot of teens will see themselves, or parts thereof in the cast of characters. Blake's sister, Nic, is really likable and it was good to see how Blake and her ex-best friend reconciled. There's enough material for a third book and I'm hoping that happens. ( )

I read this book without reading The Boyfriend App, so that might have changed my experience with the book. There were a few times where there was obviously backstory that I didn’t know. Still, it didn’t necessarily read like a sequel and the story made sense even without reading the previous one.

I enjoyed this book while I was reading it, but when I finished it I felt unsatisfied. My impression was that it was good, but it missed the mark in some things.

I started out the book feeling thoroughly annoyed with Blake. She’s pretty! She’s popular! She has everything she wants! Except that she’s lost a bunch of friends because she’s a total jerk to a lot of people! And her family is the worst sometimes! But, y’know, she’s pretty, so that’s all that matters, right? And we’re supposed to feel sorry for her. I didn’t. I wanted to go hang out with the kids she wasn’t friends with.

But I liked the concept, so I pushed past how annoying she was (and how proud she was of being the mean Queen Bee of Harrison High) and eventually she got to the point where she was tolerable. Because she wanted to change. And as she progresses in the beauty contest, she expresses more of a desire to change. I did grow to like her by the end of the book, even if the ending was somewhat predictable.

I have a few questions that I’m sure was answered by the first book. For one thing, there wasn’t enough evidence for me to feel like she truly was a mean girl. I also didn’t understand why she had been so mean in the first place. The biggest problem for me was that I didn’t see any true motivation for why she wanted to change. I just assumed it was regret for doing terrible things to people, but I didn’t find any textual evidence to support it. Maybe it’s because I didn’t read the first book? She starts out sounding almost proud of how she rules the school, even though she acknowledges that she’s mean. I didn’t feel like she showed much remorse needed to convince me that she wanted to change who she was.

Even though the book is a sequel and these questions might be answered in the first book, it would have been nice to have more of this insight into the main character about what is going on in her head about why she is the way she is.

The romance didn’t quite sell me either. She’s mean and appears shallow at school, but the new, hot boy at school finds her attractive and wants to take her on a date? Then on the date he says that he likes her and is sure that, deep down, she’s a nicer person than she acts and he believes that she can change? It just didn’t seem believable to me.

The book wants to make a point about how being mean is bad and how there is more to the importance of a person than what a person looks like. There are encouraging passages like this:

“It struck me right then that the term mean girl didn’t only apply to high school girls. Mean was a way of being and thinking and existing in the world. It was taking instead of giving. It was bringing others down instead of up. Could I really be a part of that?” (331).

And it’s a good message. But because I don’t quite understand the character’s motivations for changing, it fell flat for me. I love books and other things about people finding their real beauty (and I would love to hear more about the real beauty app her friend came up with), but I wanted more from the character in order to feel like she really believed it.

It’s just not quite convincing enough, but still a fun read.

Review also published at The Cardboard Box
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2.5 stars

Katie Sise’s The Boyfriend App turned out to be a surprise favorite, one of the few books to make me laugh so hard I cried. As such, The Pretty App was one of the rare cases when I was completely excited to hear the announcement of a surprise series. Bring on the ridiculousness, diversity, and LGBT+ positivity! My mistake was in assuming that The Pretty App would be very much in the same vein as The Boyfriend App. Though I liked The Pretty App, it didn’t have the humor I was hoping for and my interest very much waxed and waned throughout.

In The Boyfriend App, the main character was Audrey, a hacker and nerd. She was really easy to like. With The Pretty App, the heroine is the queen bee mean girl of Harrison High. She also happens to be Audrey’s ex-best friend. I do think it’s cool that Katie Sise took a risk and wrote a very different kind of heroine, one destined to be deemed unlikeable by a lot of readers.



Blake Dawkins has a lot of bad moments. In order to stay on top, she puts others down. All her life, her father, not with gubernatorial aspirations, has told her that all she had going for her was her attractiveness. Unsurprisingly, this has given her a complex, and the need to prove herself dominant for as long as being pretty is the only thing needed to be the best. However, though Blake is popular, she’s also not liked, because she treats people like shit.



Don’t worry, though. Blake has a character arc, albeit a somewhat clunky one. By getting involved in Public’s Pretty App and going on the reality television show, she learns more about her merits and being nicer to people. The main catalysts for her change, though, are Audrey and Leo, trogs (tech nerds) from Harrison High. The message is a good one, but rather heavy-handed.

My biggest problem wasn’t that Blake was often a jerk; it was that I mostly didn’t find Blake all that interesting. She lacked the vibrancy that brings characters to life in my brain. My interest in the novel at any given point was inconsistent, changing with each scene. There are the great moments, like when someone comes out to Blake, and she’s one hundred percent cool and supportive, when I was completely loving everything. The reality television show aspect was a lot of fun too, though that only began 173 pages into the book. I wish the app part had been briefer and the reality show part beefed up, even though the app was the foundation for the novel.



The romance also proved a stumbling block in my enjoyment. Blake and Leo go on one date (an all-day date to Chicago, because okay), he says all sorts of things hinting that he’s not who he pretends to be, she misses them, and then he disappears after telling her to believe that what they have is real. Blake’s tragic sad and shocked to learn his secret later on. I just could not get it up for their drama. They barely know each other, but they take their romance so seriously. Of course they don’t trust one another; they just met. The secret turned out not to be as creepy as I’d feared, but I still couldn’t get on board.



There was also a lot of random religion in this book, a feature I don’t remember from The Boyfriend App. Some people are religious, sure, but I didn’t feel like it really informed Blake’s character or the plot. There’s this scene where Blake and Audrey have just begun to reconcile and helped Blake’s sister with a problem; it was one of the best scenes in the book. Then, all of a sudden, Audrey goes “Now let’s get our prayer on,” and they proceed to pray for a full page (140). I just don’t get why this was in the book, except maybe as an effort to make Blake seem more “likeable.”



In the end, The Pretty App fell rather flat. It has some shining moments with the spirit I loved from The Boyfriend App, but mostly I didn’t care. I’ll still be watching for Katie Sise’s next book, but I hope it’s a bit heavier on the humor and lighter on people getting their prayer on.

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