Alphas by Lisi Harrison + Contest!

Pub Date - August 25, 2009.

Welcome to Alpha Academy, the super-exclusive, ultra-tricked out institute created to groom the next generation of world class dancers, writers, musicians, and inventors. It's a dream come true for one hundred lucky girls. But competition breeds excellence, and one wrong move will get you sent home at any time, for any reason. What happens when the country's best, brightest, and hawtest begin clawing and scratching their way to the top? (book back blurb)

BEWARE OF SWEARS!!!

I am now officially dumber for having read this epic fail of a book. Seriously, what the fuck is the draw? Yeah, this doesn't render WTF? It needs the full on WHAT THE FUCK??? The vapid, pea-brained little girls are as shallow as dried puddles with nothing more going for them than good feet and great ideas. Yeah sweethearts, feet can break and ideas are dimes a dozen. What happens then? I'm not a fan of targeting talent like that to being with. Everyone needs a contingency plan because, like Murphy said, anything can happen and environments like this don't offer that. Weight gain is forbidden at Alpha Academy. Seriously? Well you're in deep shit if you're a dancer and gain more muscle . . .

It's just so . . . implausible. For a book that's somewhat supposed to be grounded in reality, I just couldn't suspend my disbelief for most of it. Yes, I understand that there are child prodigies everywhere but these girls are so unfocused it was hard to believe that they've made the achievements they have being as flaky and flighty and boy-crazy as they are.

The only girl with a nominally compelling story was Charlie. She actually seemed to be a raw talent, she's down to earth and pretty normal. Not to mention she doesn't talk like a massive airhead tool. Bonus points in my book. The situation she's in sucks ass. It really does. And the woman controlling the entire situation, plus the Academy, is a complete cunt. There's just no other word for it. And chicks are supposed to want to be her? Why? Because she's successful? Superficially, sure, but her life's as empty as many of these girls' heads because of it. Apparently that's supposed to be a worthwhile venture. How encouraging . . . O_o

And what the FUCK is with the hyphenated verbs? Giggle-sniffed? Lip-kiss (this one REALLY pissed me off because that dumb-twat Skye kept saying it, what other kind of kissing are you trying to differentiate from, sweetie? and it was used REPEATEDLY)? There's one involving a pillow, pillow-sniffed or something like that. I think my brain's officially blocked them out because I can't seem to find all of them but reading it, it's like they're on every fucking page. It's so goddamn annoying I wanted to cry.

The language is just trying so hard to be hip and up-to-date and fashionable it's revolting. You know, when I was a teen, we got by just fine on reading books that didn't sound like a sub-par Clueless spin-off. Is sounding as dumb as these girls do in this book actually fashionable? Is this ear-bleeding slang-type-speak the next Valley Girl? Honestly, I can tolerate Valley Girl better than I can handle this crap.

And the worst part about it (OK, who am I kidding, they're all worst parts) was the ending. You know how Pirates of the Caribbean 2 ended? You know they filmed movies two and three together and the end of two looked like someone took a set of scissors to the reel and blindly cut? That's what the end of this book was. A shameless shill to buy the next one because where it ends has you wondering what's going to happen next. And it's not like a Harry Potter ending where the story within the book is rounded out and leaves only a few pieces hanging so that you're satisfied enough until the next book comes out? Not this one. It's like Harrison wrote one giant manuscript and randomly pointed to a spot in the book as an ending point for this first one, chopping it up like that. Ugh.

Really, what a waste. I just don't get the appeal. I really don't.

CONTEST TIME!

Yeah, I know my review isn't exactly encouraging to want to read the book but there has to be someone out there that wants my ARC, right? Please? I'll make it really simple for you. Just comment with an email and you're entered. I'll even open this one up to the planet. International people, come on and enter. Please. You have until July 30th.

Please. Someone's got to take it . . . I'm begging you . . .

ETA 7/22/09--Uh, yeah, please be aware that bombarding my comments section will not get you any closer to the book and it's one entry per person. The winner will be chosen by a random number generator.