Book Review: Little White Lies by Brianna Baker & F. Bowman Hastie III
Little White Lies by Brianna Baker
Publisher: Soho Teen
Paperback Release Date: February 7, 2017
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Seventeen-year-old honors student Coretta White’s Tumblr, Little White Lies—her witty thoughts on pretty much . . . everything—has gone viral. She’s got hundreds of thousands of followers; she’s even been offered a TV deal. But Coretta has a secret. She hasn’t been writing all her own posts. Stressed from the demands of the sudden attention, she hired an expert ghostwriter, forty-one-year-old Karl Ristoff, to keep the Tumblr going. Now consumed with guilt, she confesses.
Almost instantly, she suffers a public humiliation. The TV deal disappears. Her boyfriend breaks up with her. Then Karl is thrust into the limelight, only to suffer a dramatic fall himself. Together, they vow to find out who is responsible for ruining both of their lives, and why. But in order to exact justice and a wicked revenge, they must first come clean with each other.
Little White Lies is the story of Coretta White, a senior in high school who starts a blog called Little White Lies on a whim. Her very first entry about her parents’ little white lie, “Dante de Blasio, the fifteen-year-old son of New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio, should, ‘really shave that Afro down if he knows what’s good for him and for his father’s campaign’ “unexpectedly goes viral. She begins getting messages from readers asking for her advice about anything and everything – hundreds of them. And she feels like should answer them all. Between that and trying to write and post a new blog entry every day, she quickly becomes overwhelmed. Her school work starts to suffer and she needs good grades to get into the college of her choice. Her best friend Rachel has the perfect solution – hire a ghost writer! Rachel connects her with Karl, an experienced ghost writer who works for AllYou, a company that specializes in pairing up ghostwriters with clients. Karl has already ghostwritten several books and should have been used to working anonymously. However, when a post he writes for Little White Lies about Beyoncé becomes the blog’s most popular post, he is upset that he can’t take any credit for it. Eventually, Coretta’s secret comes out and her world is turned upside down.
Little White Lies requires some suspension of disbelief. It’s a YA novel – I’m not sure if a teenager would be more able to overlook some of the plot holes than I was. For instance, there is a very convoluted money laundering subplot that I could not make heads or tails of. And I am a former CPA so you would think I would be able to understand it.
I thought the premise of this book was original. My 10-year-old, who reads at the high school level, thought it sounded interesting after reading the blurb on the back and wants to read it. I think it would be appropriate for him. Coretta has a boyfriend but they don’t even kiss and there are few, if any, curse words. Overall, I enjoyed this book.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)
