Book Review – Tiny Pretty Things

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Title- Tiny Pretty Things
Author- Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton
Published- 2015
Genre- YA
Length- 448 pages
Rating- 3.75/5

Synopsis (Goodreads)- Gigi, Bette, and June, three top students at an exclusive Manhattan ballet school, have seen their fair share of drama. Free-spirited new girl Gigi just wants to dance—but the very act might kill her. Privileged New Yorker Bette’s desire to escape the shadow of her ballet star sister brings out a dangerous edge in her. And perfectionist June needs to land a lead role this year or her controlling mother will put an end to her dancing dreams forever. When every dancer is both friend and foe, the girls will sacrifice, manipulate, and backstab to be the best of the best.

Review- This book is clearly aimed at teenage girls, but I still quite liked it. It is full of bitchiness and everyone is incredibly overdramatic about even minor things, it’s entertaining.

One thing that did bug me, that is common to YA, is that any time anyone talked about dating someone, they always talked about being in love with them. Most people were not in love with everyone they have ever dated, and teenagers are certainly not in love with everyone they date. These kids don’t know what it is like to be in love, they date for a day and claim to love each other, it’s annoying. The over dramatisation of what it is like to kiss each other is also annoying. This nonsense also makes the book longer than necessary, the main story could be achieved in half the time without it.

There are also a few bits of medicine thrown in that are either outright wrong, or incredibly old fashioned. Suction cups for an ECG? Not in the lifetime of anyone in the target audience! Well, not in the developed world anyway.

Other than that….

The book is told from multiple perspectives which I always like. The writing is fine, easy to follow, with easy language. There are a couple of minor mistakes that should have been picked up before publication, but nothing terrible.

There is a reasonable amount of action in terms of incidents between the characters. There are no huge chunks of “downtime” where nothing happens, like there so often is in YA books. Overall it is a quick, entertaining, and easy read.

There is a lot of bullying in the book, the bullies don’t gain from it though, if anything it is the opposite, so in terms of messages to the audience it is pretty safe as far as that goes.

There are also lots of family issues, a different one for each family, so something for all sorts of people to relate to. I think that when every character has a perfect little family it can be upsetting for kids to read about it if they don’t have that themselves. The most successful and happy character in this does however have the happiest relationship with her family, so potentially that could send the message that if you don’t have that sort of background you will never be happy or successful. Hopefully most people don’t read too much into the family dynamics though!

Has anyone else read it? Or the second book? I might pick it up.