Bonjour Girl

July 1, 2018

Gr 9 Up-Clementine stands in the middle of the Manhattan sidewalk with stars in her eyes, about to begin her first day at Parsons School of Design. Fashion is her life, and quirky is her look: vintage, retro, and always well put together. Clem has worked hard to convince her parents to let her leave France and attend the internationally prestigious school in New York City. Readers will stroll through yards of fabrics as Clementine struggles with a vicious Twitter user, gasp as she meets a handsome photographer, and simply giggle as her new bestie, Jake, keeps everything on keel with his wit and fashion sense. No knowledge of high-end fashion or its internationally cut-throat business is needed. LaFlèche makes Clem's world of family, friends, fashion, and fond memories accessible to teens. Fans of Melissa Kantor's If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince? will appreciate the sassy voice and go-getter attitude of the main character. VERDICT This irresistibly funny and at times heartrending story is a must-have for teen patrons who crave novels about strong heroines reaching for their dreams.-Cathleen Ash, Manor High School Library, TX

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2018
19-year-old Clementine Liu has moved from Paris to New York as a second-year transfer student at the Parsons' School of Fashion to pursue her dreams of becoming a fashion blogger. With her rainbow-colored attire, she dresses "like a unicorn" amid the New York fashion uniform of blacks and grays and worries about making it in the cutthroat environment of Parsons. Biracial (Chinese/French) Clementine finds support in her mother's cousin, Maddie, who is a Parsons professor, and stereotypically flamboyant classmate Jake, who is of unspecified ethnicity and implied, but never stated, gay. However, she also makes a few enemies. From there, the plot offers neither surprises nor subtlety: Clementine receives a scholarship to start her dream blog, dates a hunky older man, falls apart when someone posts mean tweets about her, thinks her boyfriend is cheating on her, and seeks revenge on a mean girl. Only one character has a multidimensional personality, and every conflict engenders a wild overreaction followed by a quick resolution. These college students seem awfully immature yet not quite interesting enough to be a guilty pleasure. Being on the inside of the New York fashion scene should be delicious and alluring but just feels reduced to tedious lists of what each person is wearing and what the "look" of the ensemble is.A disappointingly unoriginal take on the world of fashion and the effects of cyberbullying. (Fiction. 13-18)

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