Kelly Gunderman's Reviews > Making Pretty

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.


I'm not really sure what I expected when I started on this book. I guess I was looking forward to a young adult novel that made me cry at the right places, smile and root for Montana, and truly care about the characters in this book.

That really wasn't what I got.

The book is about Montana and Arizona, two sisters who had their mother leave them when they were very young. While their mother still calls them and sends them the yearly birthday card, they live with their plastic surgeon father who remarries like he changes his underwear and has a different girlfriend every other week. Well, when their father announces that he is going to be marrying Karissa, Montana's 23 year old friend, Montana and Arizona feel completely lost and are angry, bitter, and upset by the decision.

Sure, I got the young adult novel. But the problem with this one was that it felt TOO young. I had to keep reminding myself that Montana (half the time I found myself having trouble even remembering this girl's name, that's how little I felt attached to this book and the characters) was not a twelve year old girl. She whines throughout this entire books, has some weird type of stalkerish/instalove romance with this guy she sees in the park (who stares at her so frequently he actually starts reading all the same books he sees her reading). Okay, maybe when you're...seventeen (I keep forgetting how old she is because she acts like she's twelve throughout the entire book), maybe that's a cute thing (although I probably would have been creeped out by it when I was that age), but I don't know. I thought their entire relationship was weird. They were telling each other that they loved each other after being together for like two weeks (even Montana's sister, Arizona, kept pointing out that they've "been together for five minutes").

Another huge issue I had with this book was the detachment with their father. I mean, Arizona came home drunk in the beginning of the novel, and her dad didn't even punish her for it. He acted like it was completely normal. This baffled me, and I should have realized that this book wasn't for me in the very beginning.

I don't know. Maybe the part of me who has two daughters kept kicking in during this book and wondering why the hell no one was paying attention to this girl in the way that she needed. It seemed like no one really seemed to care what was going on in her life, because everyone was wrapped up in their own. It did not make for a very memorable novel, unfortunately.