[Review] Elise Allen: Populazzi

[contemporary YA]

You can buy it here:
Populazzi (hardcover)
Populazzi (Amazon eBook)

Summary: (from the publisher)
Cara has always dreamed of being a Populazzi, one of the popular crowd. But it's not until she changes schools that she gets a shot at it, thanks to her best friend Claudia's crazy plan. The idea is simple: The rungs of The Ladder are relationships. First get a boyfriend who's ranked low, then climb up through more boyfriends until you're not just one of the Populazzi, but the Supreme Populazzi. Yet what starts off as a fairy tale turns into a somewhat dark comedy of errors. Just when Cara reaches the top, her life hits rock bottom. She wonders why she wanted to be popular in the first place—and if there's any way to live happily ever after now.

My thoughts:
I raced through Populazzi within a few hours, which these days is rather unusual. I cringed when Cara did something absolutely stupid, was excited for her when good things happened & worried about her all the time. Cara almost walked into my life & she didn't leave at the end of the book. I told my cousin about it about two weeks after finishing it and raved when talking to friends who I thought might like the book as well.
While I sometimes really wanted to bang my head on the table or on the wall behind (yes, I sit in bed & read even though it's supposed to be bad for your sleeping habits) because she did some obviously stupid things, I also felt with her. She so obviously wanted to belong to the in crowd instead of being a social outcast, and at times it seemed as if she was willing to do anything to get there. In fact, I think up to a certain point she did just that.
It certainly didn't help that her parents (both the biological parents as well as the step-parents) couldn't care less about her actions and her feelings unless they felt personally affected. In fact, the adults seemed almost bigger children than Cara was.
This is one of the two things I would criticize abou the book. It did not give us the almost standard absent parents in YA novels, but they neglect Cara, which isn't better. The other would be the end, which came too fast for me. I would have loved to read some more about how she deslt with the aftermath of all that happened.

Rating:
4.5/5

FTC: eGalley from the publisher through Netgalley (Thanks!)