Smart Vs. Pretty

Rating:
Summary: Sisterhood, mystery, love and coffee
Review: "Smart Vs. Pretty" deals with two very different sisters; Francesca (or commonly known as Frank) and Amanda, who inherited their parents' coffee place. Their cafe was competiting against their neighbor Moonburst (sort of like Starbucks) and business was deteriorating badly. In addition, the sisters' relationship with one another was equally bad. Frank, was considered the "smart" one but who had no friends, no social life and she yearned to find a man. Amanda on the other hand, was the popular and "pretty" one. Guys seem to be always interested in her and she had no problems finding friends. Together, they needed to revive their business.

Out of the blue came Clarissa, who was willing to help the sisters revived their business as she was doing this for a school project. She suggested holding a contest for Mr. Coffee in order to attract female to the shop. They selected Chick as the winner but soon he turned up dead. This was the starting point of the book for more plots and characters.

This book was an okay read... nothing very captivating or memorable. I wish the author would develop the characters more, giving them more personalities. I wouldn't consider this to be entirely a "chick lit" as the second half of the book was more of a mystery read for me. In addition, the love factor in this book is very "choppy" and the author did not really develop the sisters' love interests.

Rating:
Summary: don't be fooled
Review: by the yummy colors used to draw the cover or by the title or the gist written on the cover...this is definitely not for chick lit addicts, more like for kids who dont know what they want yet and are more forgiving with grave mistakes, namely, this book... it was more disappointing for me cos i've been in search for this book for a very long time and when i finally read it, it was such a letdown! i cant even begin to explain why...it's so misleading cos it's trying to sell itself as a sort of light read about 2 sisters and possibly their life trying to deal with rivalry and their apparent differences but nooooo...a little halfway through a crime was committed (huh!?!) and a stupid wild goosechase to solve the mystery ensues..oh please..stop me now..ok let me explain how bad it is...i dont have very high standards in books, i mean im up for anything as long as it makes sense or at least the author KNOWS what she wants to write about and this book cant even begin to deliver to that!...i signed up with amazon just so i can write a review to send the message to everyone that this book is BLAH. it is that bad.

Rating:
Summary: An okay read, but implausible plot
Review: I had this book on my bookshelf for quite awhile, and thought I should read it once and for all. I have heard mixed reviews on this book, so wasn't really expecting much. I knew I'd either love it or hate it. Well, I can't say I would go to either extreme; however, it doesn't venture far off from the typical chick-lit trail.

Smart vs. Pretty doesn't dwell so much on the sisterly rivalry like you would think. It's mostly about the fact that two sisters -- one smart, one pretty - are forced into business together by running the family's dwindling coffee shop in spite of the profitable coffee chain next door. Within nine pages of the woes of running a "ma and pa" store in the age of mass-production, in comes Clarissa, the girl who is going to turn it all around. As part of Clarissa's marketing classes at college, she's appointed herself savior of the coffee shop with a marketing plan to drag it out of bankruptcy and into the stratosphere.

And by this time (remember, only nine pages into the book), one already knows how it is going to end...

One thing that surprised me, though, was the fact that the book turned from something light and chick-y to a mystery (albeit light and chick-y). This mystery was its saving grace, however, since there was really nothing else to keep one turning the pages.

I didn't hate the book, but it is by no means fantastic literature. It is light, easy to read, quick to get through, and perfect for brain-vacation reading. I don't feel that my time was wasted, but I spent a lot of minutes rolling my eyes and guffawing at its predictability. I do have Ms. Frankel's newest book on my shelf - here's hoping it is much, much better.

Rating:
Summary: A no-frills read¿
Review: I had this book on my bookshelf for quite awhile, and thought I should read it once and for all. I have heard mixed reviews on this book, so wasn't really expecting much. I knew I'd either love it or hate it. Well, I can't say I would go to either extreme; however, it doesn't venture far off from the typical chick-lit trail.

Smart vs. Pretty doesn't dwell so much on the sisterly rivalry like you would think. It's mostly about the fact that two sisters -- one smart, one pretty - are forced into business together by running the family's dwindling coffee shop in spite of the profitable coffee chain next door. Within nine pages of the woes of running a "ma and pa" store in the age of mass-production, in comes Clarissa, the girl who is going to turn it all around. As part of Clarissa's marketing classes at college, she's appointed herself savior of the coffee shop with a marketing plan to drag it out of bankruptcy and into the stratosphere.

And by this time (remember, only nine pages into the book), one already knows how it is going to end...

One thing that surprised me, though, was the fact that the book turned from something light and chick-y to a mystery (albeit light and chick-y). This mystery was its saving grace, however, since there was really nothing else to keep one turning the pages.

I didn't hate the book, but it is by no means fantastic literature. It is light, easy to read, quick to get through, and perfect for brain-vacation reading. I don't feel that my time was wasted, but I spent a lot of minutes rolling my eyes and guffawing at its predictability. I do have Ms. Frankel's newest book on my shelf - here's hoping it is much, much better.

Rating:
Summary: Horrible Book
Review: It's rare that I find a book so awkwardly written and uninteresting that I can't finish it. I gave up at Chapter 12, because the dialogue was fake and the characters were flat.Yuck. Don't waste your time.

Rating:
Summary: Not very interesting
Review: This book was not worth the .25 it cost me to reserve it from the library. And thankfully, I did not purchase the book to begin with. I thought I would like it because it seemed to come up on ...lists of other books that I enjoyed. But this is where I took a chance and lost.

The author is attempting to write a mystery/romance at the same time - which is fine, but the character development, plot, writing, and the author's ability to write a good story is not there at all. I was annoyed that I wasted my time reading it. It's written in a pre-teen fashion,(something I find insulting in an adult novel), but it's not a pre-teen book due to some of the sexual & violent references. Don't bother with this book.

Rating:
Summary: An okay read, but implausible plot
Review: Thought that this was an okay read, but an implausible plot. The sequence of events & sisters' reactions to them seem unrealistic and stilted. I was not impressed.

Rating:
Summary: Smart vs. Pretty
Review: Two sisters, Frank (the smart one) and Amanda (the pretty one) grew up in NYC. Their parents owned a coffee shop, and the girls had seperate lives, loves, and jobs. After a freak accident Frank finds her parents dead, and the girls take over the shop as a legacy. The cafe is quickly failing, because of the big chain coffee shop, and they are at the point where they will not be able to pay for their next morgage payment, and, unfortunatly, their apartment is included in the cafe, so they will be homeless. Then, by fate as Amanda would like to think, Clarissa walks in. Clarissa is a grad student who wants to help the girls as her final project. She fixes up the shop and arranges a contest to get more customers to come in. After this things start go wrong. Death, lies, and cheating all become a sadly normal part of their life, and so many bad things happen that you just assume nothing worse could ever come, but it does.

This modern day murder mystery kept me on the edge of my seat. It was totally not what I was expecting, and I was just in shock and awe the whole time. I really could not believe what was happening. The book is so complex with so many different characters, and each character is described so vividly in a non-boring discription type of way. I found myself thinking that I had known everyone in the book my whole life, and I truely felt sorry for what was going on with them. Amanda and Frank did not deserve this, but in the end it comes to be realized that all of this did happen for a reason.. if it hadn't then the cafe would have to be closed and they would have been homeless, and though innocent people were injured, or even killed, it ends up all being for the best, and in the end Frank and Amanda truly get what they deserve. I love this book, and I'd recomend it to anyone.. at all. You don't have to like murder mysteries (I don't generally) and you don't have to like modern love stories because the book puts those 2 aspects into one thrilling novel.

Rating:
Summary: pretty sorry book
Review: when i picked this book up, i wanted a funny novel maybe a little romance but not a stupid murder whodunit mystery....if you are looking for a book along the lines of 'good in bed' or 'summer sisters' this sure ain't it!