Populazzi
Author: Elise Allen
Release Date: August 1, 2011
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Cara has always dreamed of being popular. When her family moves to a new town, Cara jumps at the chance to reinvent herself and have the high school social life she’s always dreamed of. Cara’s best friend Claudia jumps into action with a plan to help Cara move up “The Ladder” to become part of the extreme populazzi at her new school.

The plan involves starting near the bottom of the social ladder and dating her way up. Claudia encourages Cara to find a guy to date, meet anyone she can in his social circle, and then move on and up the ladder to a more popular guy until she reaches the very top.

Cara goes on an adventure dating a theater geek, an emo rocker and of course, one of the most popular guys in school. Throughout the story, she becomes more and more popular, eventually falling trap to forgetting where she came from and why she wanted to even be popular in the first place.

I absolutely loved the premise of this story. It tackled the same plot that so many great books before have tackled- girl wants to be popular, etc. but this book took that storyline in a completely new direction. One that was fun and fresh and definitely kept my attention.

I adored Cara, as a main character. I rooted for her because I wanted her to get what she wanted, but I also found myself conflicted and judging her as she fell deeper and deeper into losing herself and becoming just like everyone else. I think that’s a sign of a great book- when you feel that sense of conflict over whether you should even like the character or not. Allen did a great job in the beginning of the book making me relate to Cara so that when she started her downward spiral, I still was rooting for her. And of course, Cara grew throughout the novel which made me love her even more.

One thing that kind of threw me off about POPULAZZI was that at times, I felt like I was reading three seperate books. Each time Cara finds a new guy to help her climb the rungs of The Ladder, she completely changed her looks and personality. Each new guy and new personality felt a little stilted to me; the transitions between each didn’t flow the way I had hoped. However, to be fair, I did read this book over a period of about a month since I was reading bits and pieces every time I went to the gym, so perhaps it was my own fault that I felt like I was reading different books. And even though this did throw me off a bit, it didn’t stop me from enjoying the book. When I got to thinking about it more, I even realized that if this book were ever to be turned into a movie, Cara’s many transitions would probably translate quite well to the big screen.

And then of course, there’s the men in this story. It was definitely interesting to read all about Cara’s three different boys throughout the book and how she shifted and changed her personality for each- well, except for one. And that one person, I certainly was swooning over! You’ll be rooting for him until the very end too.

Allen definitely gets creative in describing the social hierarchy of high school. I love the language she uses to describe each group from the happy hopeless to the supreme populazzi. When Cara finally joins the populazzi, it was fun to read about all of the abbreviations and terminology the popular girls use; it’s like they speak a completely different language all of their own. Very fun.

I would definitely recommend this book to someone looking for a fun read with a lot of heart. This book will both entertain AND make you think.

4/5

Review copy provided by NetGalley.