Hello, my most beautiful Germs. I hope you are all well on this fine day. For this review, we have a book that I was not at all crazy about.
Are you all familiar with Anna Godbersen’s book The Luxe? If I had to describe it in one sentence, it would be as follows: It’s basically 19th century Gossip Girl.
The entire cast of characters is full of incredibly selfish, arrogant, self-serving jerks for whom I have a hard time feeling any sort of sympathy. They all have these superficial problems and complain throughout the entirety of the novel.
The worst perpetrator of this attitude was Penelope. Freakin’ Penelope, man. Anytime she reared her ugly personality on the pages of this book, I just gave one massive eye roll. It’s a wonder I made it through without injuring myself.
This is a book that I had wanted to read for years!! I love the turn-of-the-century-era novels, and I love the socialite scene, and I was so excited to see the female perspective of this; but I was so disappointed with this book. There were so many missed opportunities to have characters stick to their guns and do what they think is right no matter what the expectations of society may be, but instead they all (for the most part) give up their will and resign themselves to being miserable– which made me feel miserable while reading it.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe the reason I’m so disappointed was because this book had been on my to-read list for years and when I finally picked it up, I was met with insufferable rich kids (insert obligatory OC gif here).
If I had been younger, I may have liked this. I may have been able to relate to the pointless problems they all created for themselves, but alas, I can’t.
Apparently there is an entire series of 4 books. It’s a SAGA?! Who, I ask you, could bare to spend more than the 433 pages it took to get through the first book?
So tell me, what did you think? Did you enjoy this book? And if so, I’d love to know why. Maybe you can help me understand why I was supposed to like this.