Product Description

Brie is in love with Lancome Juicy Tubes, Louis Vuitton accessories and Charlie, her gay best friend.But Charlie is in love with 1960's pop art, 1980s teen movies ...and serial heartbreaker, Walker. Walker has only ever been in love with his VW Bug, until he meets Daisy. And Daisy is far too busy hating everyone to know what love is...

This is a story about kissing people you shouldn't, falling in love and off your heels, and breaking hearts because there'e nothing to watch on telly. (20031210)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #151754 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-13
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Dina Rabinovitch, The Guardian
(of Guitar Girl) 'Nice, pacy read and an antidote for children reared on Pop Idol.'

Review
(of Guitar Girl) 'Sarra Manning's debut novel follows the highs and lows of the rock'n'roll lifestyle in this warts 'n' all spoof autobiography of Molly Montogomery, lead singer of teen band, The Hormones...Just the thing for wannabe pop stars.' (The Bookseller 20050101)

(of Guitar Girl) '...Molly Montgomery's compelling voice will pull in readers as she chronicles her quick rise to pop star fame with her band, The Hormones.' (Publishers Weekly 20050101)

(of Guitar Girl) 'Nice, pacy read and an antidote for children reared on Pop Idol.' (Dina Rabinovitch, The Guardian )

A funny, stylish tale of testing crushes written by an ex-ELLEgirl editor. (ELLE Girl )

Light-hearted and witty. A great holiday book. (mykindplace.com )

A wittily, wickedly observed comedy of teen manners! (Youngscot.org )

'Witty and pacy, the story deals with the complexity and confusion of teenage emotions. The use of multiple narrators adds depth and humour.'

mykindplace.com
Light-hearted and witty. A great holiday book.

Customer Reviews

Very Enjoyable
This was the first novel I read of Sarra Manning - though have now read Guitar Girl too - and I really enjoyed it.

I loved Brie's character, mostly because...well...she does a lot of things that I do: obsess over looks and style because of insecurities, come out with nonsense that makes no sense, and prefers Justin Timberlake to Bob Marley. (Though, as a writer myself, I would like to think I am just a little cleverer than Brie. A little ^^).

I also found that Charlie was a very nice character to read, I sincerely liked him and could imagine him as being a person I would really get on with in reality. I adored the affection he held for Brie, and how that was tested by her attitude towards his sexuality; and also the break in their friendship was very well done (the fact that contrary to prior thoughts, it was Charlie who suffered without his best friend more than Brie).

Walker, in my opinion, is a brilliant character. He fitted the stereotype for chavvy, insensitive, sex-manic guy and I liked the turn-around he had. For some reason - and I am probably the only person who read this book who did so - I speculated whether Walker would end up with Brie, which in my opinion would've been cute, but never mind. The downside to Walker's character was his obsession with Daisy, mostly because I really did not like that girl in the story at all.

So, now we reach Daisy. As I said, I didn't like her character in any way. At she is the reason I am only giving the story 4 stars. To be honest, (and I think another reviewer touched on this), I couldn't visualise Daisy's character in my mind. I have a perfect image of Brie, Charlie and Walker and could always think of them flawlessly as I read; Daisy, I couldn't. When she first entered the book, I imagined a large girl (size sixteen, as stated), who was very hard-faced, not very pretty with a tendancy to slouch in a manly-like way. However, my thoughts of her in this way were contradicted by descriptions of Daisy further into the book, such as: Walker going on and on and on and on (infinity) about how pretty Daisy was, and Brie mentioning that Daisy "looked almost pretty" towards the end, and everything like that. Little descriptions or dialogue to do with how Daisy was holding herself or the way she looked really confused what I imagined her to be. Also, not only could i not visualise her physically, but I could not relate to or feel empathy for her character in any way. I found her increasingly annoying by her feminist raves (though, as someone else said also, she had no real reason to hate men...excluding what she thought of Walker - originally), and how cynical she was all the time. Someone who isn't light-hearted and doesn't seem to have the mental capacity to understand where people unlike her are coming from is very hard to like in a novel. I also felt like screaming "You bloody HYPOCRITE!" when all that happened with Walker at the end, and I also shared Brie's views on not wanting to imagine them snogging...anyway.

So, yes. A very, very good book, with 3-out-of-four likeable characters. The downside was that I became constantly tempted to skip past the Daisy chapters because I just found her so grating to read.

Good...but hmm..
I liked this book. I did. I just have some issues.
I loved the characters of Brie and Walker; Sarah Manning aptly goes deep into their stereotypes and draws out a soul. However, the characters of Daisy and Charlie were deeply flawed. Manning obviously wanted to make a BIG GAY STATEMENT and fails miserably. I liked the idea of exploring the concept of love and lust and showing how its not someones gender you fall in love with, but someones heart. Charlie just about scraped by with this (but what was that Charlie/Brie moment about? Made no damn sense.) but Daisy pissed me off. For a start what does she look like? We know she dyes her blonde hair black and wears oversized clothes, but she describes herself as a size 16 (shock, horror) one minute and then seems to be smaller the next. What statement was this about? Being big aint bad? How original.
Why did Manning choose to make Charlie so GAY? Not gay, but GAY (cue jazz hands and Judy Garland). That stuck in my teeth. And Daisy was your typical militant feminist who hates men (tho' obviously not that badly). Theres no reason given for her hatred of men and it doesnt stand up to much anyway. And why all the Buffy-speak? A whole bunch of their lines and phrases were clearly lifted out of the tv show. Not that witty.
Thats my issue. The straight characters were fleshed out and grew from their experiences. The gay characters were one-dimensional and sterotypical. Still a book I've read more than once while in the bath. So its not all bad.

Fantastic
I loved this book from beginning to end. I loved Diary of a Crush which Sarra wrote for J17 magazine, so when I discovered she was writing longer books I had to read them! Guitar Girl was brilliant, and Pretty Things is too. The style of the book is great too, which each character telling their part of the story. I discovered a great band through this book too by the quotations at the beginning of each chapter. I really recommend any of Sarra's books, you won't be disappointed!