Review: Bright Young Things

Bright Young Things by Anna Godbersen


"DAAR-ling, This is absolutely a-DORR-able!"



Cordelia Grey and Letty Larkspur leave all they have ever know in Union, Ohio to find their way in New York City during the roaring 20's.


Cordelia's mother died when she was young and her aunt took her begrudgingly in and raised her. Her aunt constantly reminds Cordelia that she "is just like her mother". Cordelia has always heard stories of her father that were painted by her aunt that made him into a horrible man. Cordelia wants to find out for herself.


Letty, Cordelia's best friend, has always had a dream of making it big on the stage and movies.


Cordelia and Letty set out for New York thinking nothing can be better than life in a big city.


Shortly after arriving in New York, the girls have an argument and go about their separate ways. In doing that, each girl plus the addition of Astrid Donal, all have very different paths and backgrounds, but their paths still ring true with teen age girls of today. Family, arguments, dreams of bigger things, enemies, boys, crushes, and first kisses... its all in there.


These three girls are the focus of the story while the speakeasies, flappers, and jazz clubs of Manhattan 1920's shimmer in the background. The writing is absolutely so descriptive that you can almost hear the band playing, you can feel the butterflies in your stomach as you look down 34 stories to the ground below from a construction site that will eventually become The Chrysler Building, and see the airplane being used as a pen to write a message with the sky as a tablet.


This is the first book in a new series and I can't wait to read the next one Beautiful Days set to be released in September 2011. I mean who can wait when in the prologue we are told:

....."-although there are three...... all marching toward their own secret fates, and long before the next decade rolled around, each would escape in her own way-one would be famous, one would be married, and one would be dead."

I love historical fiction and Godbersen didn't disappoint. This is such a refreshing new road for YA stories.