Splendor

Splendor
By Anna Godbersen (404 pages)
Published by HarperCollins
Bookish rating: 4

In the fourth and final installment of my guilty reading pleasure, the Luxe novels, our heroines and villains get their plot lines all tied up.

Godbersen keeps the plotting fresh and unpredictable. We briefly get to go to Cuba circa 1900, we still get a fun dose of scandal, and characters remain well-crafted and adequately complex (for the purposes of the genre--this ain't Shakespeare). In short, the entertainment value? Still there.

Now, I'm no prude when it comes to young adult fiction. I'm all for f-bombs, sex, drugs, alcohol, and any other Naughty Thing, so long as the said Naughty Thing adds to the novel (character development, conflict, plot, theme) and isn't just cheaply trying to shock or appear edgy. However, like the previous Luxe book, it IS a tad weird to read about marital dynamics in a book aimed at teens. Ya know? I get Godbersen's dilemma---girls married as teens in 1900! Still, it's . . . strange to me.  

Anyway,  the final book succeeds without losing steam or getting wacky plot-wise. The entire series is well done and embarrassingly entertaining. Have I mentioned how much I enjoyed it?!

Godbersen's next series, Bright Young Things, is set in the 1920s. OBVIOUSLY I'll be reading those.

In the meantime, SIGH. I'm kind of bummed the Luxe series is all over. It's a sad but satisfying feeling---the remnants of plain old good reading.