Beautiful World
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Amelia Warner will stop at nothing to get what she wants: everything.
Seventeen-year-old Amelia Warner is always on the outside. Moving from boarding school to boarding school with her brother and their father, the untenured professor, doesn't help. Amelia lives inches from the sons and daughters of the elite, forever looking in on the beautiful people. A natural-born charmer who doesn't lie so much as rework the truth to her advantage, Amelia is well-versed in the art of faking a high-society identity to get limited access to the luxe life, but she's never figured out how to truly belong. Then she meets Courtney Moore, the Upper East Side heiress who needs a friend as badly as Amelia wants to be that friend, and suddenly a world of opportunity opens up for her. Parties, shopping, her own wing in the Moore mansion—it's all hers for the taking, as long as she can keep her real life a secret, especially from the new acquaintance who's been asking way too many questions. Can Amelia stay one step ahead of the doubters to secure her place in the beautiful world?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this debut YA, Hollings adds to the Mean Girls subgenre by introducing Amelia Warner, a master backstabber and experienced liar, whose academic father can't afford the A-list life she desperately wants. Chapters alternate between the viewpoints of conniving Amelia (actual name: Ann), nouveau riche Courtney Moore (Amelia's wealthy target) and Amelia's brother, Zach, whose main appeal appears to be his looks. The plot basically revolves around Amelia piling lie upon lie in order to further dupe and con sweet-natured Courtney into inviting Amelia to stay at her spacious Manhattan apartment and buying Amelia everything from a Cartier watch to cocktails at the Carlyle Hotel. None of the characters is especially sympathetic not even Courtney who is frustratingly gullible and Amelia's lies are haphazard rather than clever. Hollings's prose does the usual name-dropping for every article of clothing mentioned and top-tier restaurant and club visited, giving the book the air of a manual for social climbers like Amelia. It's easy to envision readers Googling everything from Harry's Bar in Rome to Cohiba cigars to polish their own repartee. Ages 14 up.
