True Colors, from Krysten Lindsay Hager (Landry’s True Colors #1)

Hello, welcome to my daily review! I know you’re all shocked at my rhythm, I am as well, haha! Anyway, today’s book is True Colors, the first volume in Landry’s True Colors series, by Krysten Lindsay Hager 😀 I’ve received my copy from YA Bound Book Tours in exchange for an honest review during the book’s tour time. Thanks again 😀 The time has arrived!

The Story

Landry is a common teenage girl, with the common struggles of life in this age: having fun with her best friends, avoid the troublemakers at school and worry about her grades. Until one of her best friends, Ericka, pushes her and their other friend Tori into participating of a tv show selection –the American Ingénue, the most popular modeling show ever.

Even against all odds, Landry passes the first test and is invited to the second test. She couldn’t be happier until she realizes that Ericka and Tori don’t want to have anything to do with her anymore – and it wasn’t even Landry’s idea to go to the hearing in the first place!

Now Landry has to learn what true friendship means while struggling to not sound stuck up for her modeling gigs.

The Analysis

Just remembering that those were my impressions and opinion as a reader 🙂

Since I participated in the blitz for the third book in the series, Landry In Like, I was pinning to start this series. It’s not my typical YA read, as I’m not that a fan of contemporary, but something about the series just caught my eye. I have to say that I expected to see more about the backstage of the start of a modeling career than all the teen drama that came along with it and that Landry let me down several times when it came to her choices, but overall I enjoyed this reading experience. I totally plan to continue reading the series, as Krysten has a beautiful writing style that sticks the reader on Landry’s life until the last page and I think that Landry herself has much potential as a character and I’d love to see her growing up into a strong woman 🙂 All considered, three stars!

The narrative was first person styled from Landry’s point of view. Surprisingly, this didn’t bothered me at all. I had nothing against Landry, but she made it hard for me to actually like her. I may have mentioned this one time or two, but I never had the patience with people that don’t know who they are or where they have come from (you know, existential problems. It’s one thing if the person lost their memories or something like that, but that wasn’t the case at True Colors).

In my defense, I suffered with bullying during high school too – to this day, I have panic attacks when I’m forced to walk among large gatherings of teenies, both male and female, and sometimes I even get nervous diarrhea episodes thanks to that. It’s been five years since I’ve left high school, so thanks a lot, bullies.

Anyway, my point is that I understand Landry’s feeling of being tossed aside and the insecurities, but I couldn’t forgive her for treating people poorly because of somebody else’s judgment. It’s one thing if you don’t like someone and doesn’t want to be around this person for this reason; it’s another entirely different thing to not be around someone just because someone says you shouldn’t. It’s a free country, people! And that was my biggest disappointment regarding Landry. She grew up a lot and even changed a bit during the story, but that’s where the stars got lost.

The plot was good enough, wrapped around Landry’s daily life and the start of her modeling career, but I honestly thought, by the book’s blurb, that True Colors would focus more on her professional ascendance and show how this impacted her social life, not the other way around. Don’t get me wrong, I love teen drama, it’s highly amusing, but I guess I expected more. Oh, well. It happens, haha!

As I said before, I didn’t mind Landry for good or bad, but she did let me down a few times. I really liked Devon and some of the other girls, but no one managed to catch my eye for long. That statement includes the boys, as none made it to my boyfriends list – but that’s okay, since I was a teen myself I was already into older guys. Like older than 20 guys. So I can’t really say anything here, the boys were just too young for me, haha! What I can say is that Hager built up the characters in such a fashion that made them real and likeable. Even the awful people like Ericka were fun to hate, you know? Like a sport. I caught myself smiling several times while I read the book, as it felt like I was one of the gossipers, haha!

The parts in which the modeling deal effectively appeared were very good as well, and realistic. I have offline friends that once were models, so I can speak up for that, haha! Sometimes, the most unexpected things happen in this world.

Overall, if you enjoy contemporary romances, gossiping, school drama and female power games, you really should read True Colors 🙂

Thank you so much for reading my review! And thanks to YA Bound Book Tours for sending me my review copy, it was a very interesting read!

Bellow, you can read more about the author, Krysten Lindsay Hager, watch the book trailer and enter an awesome giveaway 😀

ABOUT KRYSTEN

Krysten Lindsay Hager is the author of the Landry’s True Colors Series, a clean reads young adult series and the new Star Series. Krysten writes about friendship, self-esteem, fitting in, middle school and high school, frenemies, modeling, crushes, values, and self-image in True Colors, Best Friends…Forever? And Landry in Like, as well as in, Next Door to a Star (Star Series). Her sequel to Next Door to a Star will be out March 22 2016.

Krysten is a book addict who has never met a bookstore she didn’t like. She’s worked as a journalist and writes YA, MG, humor essays, and adult fiction. She is originally from Michigan and has lived in Portugal, South Dakota, and currently resides in southwestern Ohio where you can find her reading and writing when she’s not catching up on her favorite shows. She received her master’s degree from the University of Michigan-Flint.

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