Thursday, January 26, 2012

Paradise, by Jill S. Alexander



Paisley is the drummer in a band. She's good, but she would never be able to tell her parents about her passion. They wouldn't understand or allow her to do it. She only has to look at the way they have controlled her older sister Lacey to see what happens when you try to confront their parents.



But Paisley isn't her sister and with the encouragement of a new boy in town, who has the ability to instill confidence in just about anyone, she hopes to change things. It won't be easy to stand up for her dreams, but she'll find a way.



Alexander's novel maintains all of the smart writing of her first novel (The Sweetheart of Prosper County) but simply isn't as strong of a story. It suffers a bit from the tropes of the teen romance genre (new mysterious boy, brave and fearless, but gentle beyond his years). And it's uneven (the first few pages are amazingly well crafted, but latter pages fall into meaningless cliche). Finally, there's the ending (!) that takes a completely unnecessary melodramatic turn that serves little purpose. One wonders what on earth happened there! Still, I enjoyed it in spite of its flaws.

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