Scan barcode
A review by prioryofprose
Belles by Jen Calonita
5.0
I really believe that you enjoy a book more if you are in the right mood for it, and I think I was in the perfect mood to listen to Belles by Jen Calonita. I had never really read a review or even heard about the book before I got it from the library. Sometimes it is really nice to be pleasantly surprised by a book. It was like the Belles from Hart of Dixie meets Gossip Girl’s Blair! Mean girls in North Carolina! Belles was read by Julia Whelan. It is 9 hours, 8 minutes long.
Likes:
I really liked the main characters, Isabella and Mirabella. Both of them were stuck in situations that were out of their comfort zones and were really trying to figure out how to survive when things changed so drastically.
On Isabella side - I cannot imagine how awful it would feel to lose all of the family I have known and then be moved in with some relative you didn’t even know existed. Plus, going from barely making ends meet to excessive wealth would be hard. I still have trouble understanding paying $1200 for a purse when that is more than my mortgage payment!
On Mira’s side – to have a girl move into your house and completely throw your routine out of order would be tough. It would be hard to be told to like someone and have to cart them around every day. Although she really made some huge mistakes with the relationship, I can understand how hard it would be for a teenage girl in a preppy high school!
The villains in the story – the mean girls were so AWFUL! I so wanted to punch them! They were really well written. They were definitely fun to hate!
The side characters were really fun, the artsy boy, the surfer boy and Isabella’s best friend! So much to love in this book, it went smoothly and kept a good pace!
Gripes:
I just started the second book in the series, Winter White. I am just worried that the first book should have been a stand-alone. It seems odd to make a series out of this book when the secrets were let out in the first book. I am “pre-judging” which I know is not fair. I will have the second book to report on soon, but I just felt it would have been a good stand-alone.
For more reviews visit
A Flurry of Ponderings
Likes:
I really liked the main characters, Isabella and Mirabella. Both of them were stuck in situations that were out of their comfort zones and were really trying to figure out how to survive when things changed so drastically.
On Isabella side - I cannot imagine how awful it would feel to lose all of the family I have known and then be moved in with some relative you didn’t even know existed. Plus, going from barely making ends meet to excessive wealth would be hard. I still have trouble understanding paying $1200 for a purse when that is more than my mortgage payment!
On Mira’s side – to have a girl move into your house and completely throw your routine out of order would be tough. It would be hard to be told to like someone and have to cart them around every day. Although she really made some huge mistakes with the relationship, I can understand how hard it would be for a teenage girl in a preppy high school!
The villains in the story – the mean girls were so AWFUL! I so wanted to punch them! They were really well written. They were definitely fun to hate!
The side characters were really fun, the artsy boy, the surfer boy and Isabella’s best friend! So much to love in this book, it went smoothly and kept a good pace!
Gripes:
I just started the second book in the series, Winter White. I am just worried that the first book should have been a stand-alone. It seems odd to make a series out of this book when the secrets were let out in the first book. I am “pre-judging” which I know is not fair. I will have the second book to report on soon, but I just felt it would have been a good stand-alone.
For more reviews visit
A Flurry of Ponderings