Tag Archives: Elizabeth Eulberg

November 27, 2013 · 11:00 am

Waiting on Wednesday: Better Off Friends by Elizabeth Eulberg

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine. It’s designed for bloggers to spotlight the upcoming releases that they simply can’t wait to read.

I really enjoyed Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality. It was funny and I loved Eulberg’s writing style. I can’t wait to see what characters Eulberg brings to us in her next book.

Title: Better Off Friends

Author: Elizabeth Eulberg

Publisher: Point

Release Date: February 25, 2014

Summary (from Goodreads): For Macallan and Levi, it was friends at first sight. Everyone says guys and girls can’t be just friends, but these two are. They hang out after school, share tons of inside jokes, their families are super close, and Levi even starts dating one of Macallan’s friends. They are platonic and happy that way.

Eventually they realize they’re best friends — which wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t keep getting in each other’s way. Guys won’t ask Macallan out because they think she’s with Levi, and Levi spends too much time joking around with Macallan, and maybe not enough time with his date. They can’t help but wonder . . . are they more than friends or are they better off without making it even more complicated?

From romantic comedy superstar Elizabeth Eulberg comes a fresh, fun examination of a question for the ages: Can guys and girls ever really be just friends? Or are they always one fight away from not speaking again — and one kiss away from true love?

Review: Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality by Elizabeth Eulberg

Title: Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality

Author: Elizabeth Eulberg

Published: March 1, 2013

Publisher: Point

Interests: contemporary ya, realistic, humor, family

Summary (from Goodreads): Everybody loves Lexi. She’s popular, smart, funny…but she’s never been one of those girls, the pretty ones who get all the attention from guys. And on top of that, her seven-year-old sister, Mackenzie, is a terror in a tiara, and part of a pageant scene where she gets praised for her beauty (with the help of fake hair and tons of makeup).
Lexi’s sick of it. She’s sick of being the girl who hears about kisses instead of getting them. She’s sick of being ignored by her longtime crush, Logan. She’s sick of being taken for granted by her pageant-obsessed mom. And she’s sick of having all her family’s money wasted on a phony pursuit of perfection.
The time has come for Lexi to step out from the sidelines. Girls without great personalities aren’t going to know what hit them. Because Lexi’s going to play the beauty game – and she’s in it to win it

Review: This is a humorous and, at times, heartbreaking, quick read. I really like Lexi and her friends Benny and Cam. Benny and Cam reminded me a little of the Damian and Janis from Mean Girls. In fact, there is little of Mean Girls in this book–Lexi is trying to fit in with the “Beautiful People” by giving herself a makeover. The makeover part then led me to think about She’s All That. Both movies happen to on my favorite movies list so it was nice to see the connections in the book, whether they were intended or not. And of course, you can’t read this book without thinking about Toddlers & Tiaras or Honey Boo Boo. Lexi’s little sister, Mackenzie, participates in all things pageant every weekend and poor Lexi is forced to endure all things pageant too. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when Lexi is forced to put butt glue on her seven-year-old sister for the bikini competition. Lexi’s descriptions of high school are humorous and, dare I say, fairly accurate. I don’t want to give anything away but I did love the way book ended.

I’m looking forward to reading Eulberg’s other titles: The Lonely Hearts Club, Prom & Prejudice and Take Bow. I think she has just become one of my favorite authors.

It’s Monday: Here’s What I’m Reading

It’s Monday! What are you Reading?: From Picture Books to YA is a meme hosted by TeachMentorTexts . It’s a spin off from Sheila at Book Journeys It’s Monday! What are you Reading? with a focus on Children’s books and YA (pretty obvious).

Here’s what I read this past week:

The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth LaBan

Summary from Goodreads: Tim Macbeth, a seventeen-year-old albino and a recent transfer to the prestigious Irving School, where the motto is “Enter here to be and find a friend.” A friend is the last thing Tim expects or wants—he just hopes to get through his senior year unnoticed. Yet, despite his efforts to blend into the background, he finds himself falling for the quintessential “It” girl, Vanessa Sheller, girlfriend of Irving’s most popular boy. To Tim’s surprise, Vanessa is into him, too, but she can kiss her social status goodbye if anyone ever finds out. Tim and Vanessa begin a clandestine romance, but looming over them is the Tragedy Paper, Irving’s version of a senior year thesis, assigned by the school’s least forgiving teacher.

Jumping between viewpoints of the love-struck Tim and Duncan, a current senior about to uncover the truth of Tim and Vanessa, The Tragedy Paper is a compelling tale of forbidden love and the lengths people will go to keep their .

Just One Day by Gayle Forman

Summary from Goodreads: When sheltered American good girl Allyson “LuLu” Healey first meets laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter at an underground performance ofTwelfth Night in England, there’s an undeniable spark. After just one day together, that spark bursts into a flame, or so it seems to Allyson, until the following morning, when she wakes up after a whirlwind day in Paris to discover that Willem has left. Over the next year, Allyson embarks on a journey to come to terms with the narrow confines of her life, and through Shakespeare, travel, and a quest for her almost-true-love, to break free of those confines.

My reading plan for this week:

1. The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult