Review Nine: ALEX Award Winner

Citation:

Rebeck, Theresa. Three Girls and Their Brother. Shaye Areheart Books: New York. 2008. Print.

Annotation:

The Hellers are a dysfunctional family consisting of an overbearing mother, absent father, three daughters and one son.  The daughters become famous because of their red hair and get tangled in the web of parties and those who want to take advantage of them.

Justification for Rejection:

While the subject of fame and its destructive powers is interesting and intiguing, Rebeck falls short with her cast of typical characters and predictable plot.  The family is unkind to each other from the start and fake in every sort of way imaginable.  Their mother has no authority in the story nor any kind of strength.  Each daughter has her own distinctive personality, but they do not act in any way toward each other like they are sisters. 
Everything about this novel, from the setting to the events, seems so forced and fake.  It reads as if it were written by someone who has no idea what someone in the limelight really goes through.  Everything that the Hellers encounter could be found on the front cover of a magazine.  Nothing seems real except for the fact that the youngest doesn't want to be a model after all, but is forced into it by her sisters and mother. 
The style of narration with its constant tense shifts and point of view shifts is distracting and hard to read.  Also distracting was the sparse way that information is given.  The descriptions of the family age order and also their apperances come in small droplets that the reader has to mold together with difficulty. 
This novel is one that does not give the reader a chance to absorb the story at all. Everything is thrown together in a stack of pages that the reader has to sort out.  The reader is not given a chance to care about any of these people because they don't care about themselves.
All in all, this novel is one that should be passed on the shelves.  The subject may be enticing, but the book leaves something to be desired.

Genre:

Edgy / Coming of Age