Tell a Tale: Bright Young Things

Fall in love with the Jazz Age in this book.

Summary (from Goodreads): The year is 1929. New York is ruled by the Bright Young Things: Flappers and socialites seeking thrills and chasing dreams in the anything-goes era of the Roaring Twenties.

Letty Larkspur and Cordelia Grey escaped their small Midwestern town for New York's glittering metropolis. All Letty wants is to see her name in lights, but she quickly discovers Manhattan is filled with pretty girls who will do anything to be a star....

Cordelia is searching for the father she's never known, a man as infamous for his wild parties as he is for his shadowy schemes. Overnight, she enters a world more thrilling and glamorous than she ever could have imagined — and more dangerous. It's a life anyone would kill for...and someone will.

The only person Cordelia can trust is ­Astrid Donal, a flapper who seems to have it all: money, looks, and the love of Cordelia's brother, Charlie. But Astrid's perfect veneer hides a score of family secrets.

Across the vast lawns of Long Island, in the ­illicit speakeasies of Manhattan, and on the blindingly lit stages of Broadway, the three girls' fortunes will rise and fall — together and apart. From the New York Times bestselling author of THE LUXE comes an epic new series set in the dizzying last summer of the Jazz Age.

A flapper~
Doesn't it make you want to cut
off all your hair and throw on a sequined dress?

Review: I enjoyed being taken back in time to the 1920's in this novel. Even though the storyline was fairly simplistic and I couldn't really connect with one of the main characters I still want to continue with the series to find out who, as the prologue ominously puts it, becomes famous, who gets married, and who dies.

The setting of the jazz age with all of its excesses and beautiful fashions will draw you in immediately. I have a hard time with Cordelia though. I can't imagine anyone in the real world having such out of whack priorities and being so utterly selfish. That being said, each of the thee main characters leads such fascinating lives I think the author could've written an entire novel on each one alone.

I'm looking forward to returning to flappers, cigarette girls, bootleggers, and parties till dawn just as soon as I find book number two.  Just a note...this is a Young Adults novel.  I knew this going into it but the lines between genres are so blurred these days I thought I'd give it a go anyway.  This could be why the main characters are not overly developed and why one of them is more than a little boy crazy.

Have you ever read a young adults novel?  What's the difference?  Did it open you up to new authors?  Leave a comment below~