Review: The Regulars by Georgia Clark

Synopsis from Good Reads:

A fierce, feisty, and “wonderfully entertaining” (Scott Westerfeld, author of Uglies) debut with a magical twist about three ordinary, regular girls who suddenly have their fantasies come true…or do they?

Best friends Evie, Krista, and Willow are just trying to make it through their mid-twenties in New York. They’re regular girls, with average looks and typical quarter-life crises: making it up the corporate ladder, making sense of online dating, and making rent.

Until they come across Pretty, a magic tincture that makes them, well…gorgeous. Like, supermodel gorgeous. And it’s certainly not their fault if the sudden gift of beauty causes unexpected doors to open for them.

But there’s a dark side to Pretty, too, and as the gloss fades for these modern-day Cinderellas, there’s just one question left:

What would you sacrifice to be Pretty?

Wildly irreverent, blatantly sexy, and observed with pitch-perfect wit, The Regulars is fresh “compulsive reading from a bright new voice” (Brenda Bowen, author of Enchanted August) in fiction, perfect for fans of Jennifer Close and Kevin Kwan.

I received a copy of The Regulars via NetGalley. It does not impact my review.

The Regulars will be available August 2, 2016

Addicting writing and short chapters helped make this a quick read, even though it was a little longer than it needed to be. I liked the style and I think the writing is what mostly compelled me to keep reading about these awful girls.

I appreciate a good character-driven story, but to really love one I either need to Love the characters or Love to Hate them. Unfortunately I felt slightly annoyed, but mostly ambivalent towards the characters in this book. While diverse (not all just straight, white girls), they were pretty clichéd – Evie: The Angry, Feminist, Bi-Sexual; Krista: The Good Time Girl that flakes out on all responsibility; Willow: The Artist with a Tortured Soul. I also felt the character growth was pretty much contained to the final chapters and was kind of too little too, late for me.

I was surprised at how Pretty ended up working. I thought it would just enhance their features to a traditionally beautiful level, but it straight up changes their appearance into a new person. Because of this they come up with fake names and ignore their normal lives. It bothered me that there was virtually no consequences whatsoever to this. I also wished that we would have learned a little more about the origin of Pretty and how it works, but it pretty much remains a huge mystery that none of the characters are all that concerned about.

While I like the overall theme of feminism and self-acceptance, it just wasn’t quite executed as well as I wanted it to be. The main characters were pretty selfish and kind of awful people and they didn’t really face any lasting consequences to any of the bad things they did while on Pretty. The ending felt way too easy and they’re only marginally better people than they were before.

Overall, The Regulars was a quick read with some addictive writing, but it’s unlikable characters made the book kind of hard to enjoy at times. I wish that the character growth would have been more pronounced and that they would have had to face some consequences of their poor decisions. This book wasn’t my cup of tea, but I think there are a lot of people who would really enjoy it.

Overall Rating (out of 5): 2.5 Stars