Cocks, Heather & Morgan, Jessica. Spoiled.

Allen & Unwin, $16.99

Designer teen froth

Just before sixteen-year-old Molly Dix’s mother passed away, she revealed the true identity of Molly’s father. He’s not the deceased war hero she imagined; he isHollywoodmovie star Brick Berlin. And Molly is moving fromMellencamp,Indianato LA to live with him, and the sister, Brooke, she never knew she had.

It appears Brooke is as shallow as Molly is genuine, and she’s disinclined to share Daddy’s limelight with a bumpkin interloper. New sibling rivalry, a designer high school, ambitious celebrity children: from Valley Girl via Heathers to Clueless, we’ve walked in these teens’ designer heels before. But hey, it’s always been fun.

Cocks and Morgan write the nasty, popular blog, GoFugYourself.com. It’s full of hilarious little snippets of bitchiness, which may explain why in Spoiled, they try to pipe so many one-liners (or one-phrasers) into the early pages. Sentences are crammed with wannabe witty simile, like Brynne Edelsten’s sequinned bodice. Once this rapid-fire show off metaphorfest subsides, the book settles into an entertaining teen read. The occasional namedropping of real-life celebrities is an amusing use of the authors’ insider VIP pass to LA LA Land.

With one eye watching the next book in the series, the authors’ other metaphoric eye is clearly focussed on the film Spoiled may become, even describing one scene as “straight out of one of those terrible teen movies that are also secretly awesome”. I can see Blake Lively playing Brooke right now. Is Bruce Willis too old for protein bar-munching Brick? Molly, of course, will be a fabulous newcomer.

Reviewed March 2012