One Book I Read This Summer

        There have been tons of modern Cinderella adaptations. There is the book series Cinderella Cleaners, the Disney movies "A Cinderella Story" and "Another Cinderella Story", the ABC Family movie "A Cinderella Story: Once Upon A Song", and a book called "Cindy Ella". Part of the reason it is so popular to do modern Cinderella stories is that it's not that difficult to make Cinderella modern and have it make sense. There can be a nice girl with a mean step-family who falls in love with a dashing celebrity, popular guy, or whatever in real life. However, Snow White is incredibly hard to modernize.  But Robin Palmer, the author of "Cindy Ella", definitely pulled it off.

          In Palmer's book, "Wicked Jealous: A Love Story", there is a girl named Simone who lives in Hollywood. Simone's father is the writer of a popular TV show, and he has a supermodel girlfriend named Hillary who is clearly supposed to be the evil queen. In the beginning, Simone is overweight, but as she gets thinner and thinner, she becomes very beautiful and makes the evil queen very jealous. While this is happening, Simone is living with her brother and his six roommates, who all have nicknames (the 7 dwarfs!). Simone is also allergic to apples, and Hillary seems to always "forget" that, which explains the apple poisoning. Also, there is a boy named Jason in the book who I thought would be Prince Charming at the beginning but ends up being a complete jerk. One of the dwarfs actually ends up to be Prince Charming. However, with the apple poisoning, Simone is not saved by true love's kiss. She actually pretends to eat something that clearly has apple in it and have a severe allergic reaction, and then records on a tape recorder how Hillary doesn't do anything to help her. Simone definitely seems smarter than the traditional Snow White.

     For the most part, I liked "Wicked Jealous". I thought it was awesome that someone could get the story of Snow White to make sense in a modern setting. However, there were some  flaws. For example, I kind of didn't like how Hillary was such a one-dimensional character. I know the evil queen was kind of like that in the original Snow White as well, but I think that part of the reason they didn't go in depth about her was that it was really short (the Brothers Grimm version, I mean). I think they also didn't go so in depth about her in the Disney movie because, well, it's Disney. It's meant for kids. But "Wicked Jealous" is meant for teens and is pretty long, so I was disappointed that they made Hillary such of a caricature. I like books where they show that people are complex. Another thing I didn't like about the book was that Simone was kind of put on a pedestal. She was made out to be "perfect", but she wasn't. She was actual kind of judgmental sometimes. I actually feel like a lot of the characters weren't developed enough. But although there were flaws in character development, I still enjoyed the story and will definitely re-read it.