I'm so excited to be reviewing this book! Screen Queens was pitched as perfect for someone who loves The Bold Type, which is one of those shows I never found time to watch, but always wanted to. In any case, I'm so happy to be part of this blog tour! Let's get into it.
Screen Queens brings together three high school graduates from completely different backgrounds to team up and create an app in order to win an internship at the hottest tech company in Silicon Valley, Pulse. Lucy is there because she idolizes the creator of the Pulse app and wants nothing more than to improve her score and become an influencer. Maddie is trying to boost her graphic design resume and get back to her little brother. And Delia loves to code but hasn't had the chance to leave her small Midwestern town before this five-week, all-in tech competition program.
Not to mention if they win the competition, they'd be the only all-female team to do so. Ever.
The girls band together to get through a summer of drama, challenging science, and maybe a dash of love on the side.
3 Things I Loved
The characters. Lucy, Maddie, and Delia are all so different, yet they play off each other completely genuinely. I adore each of them and dislike each of them for different reasons, but they're all GREAT characters. Having three points of view like that and making the voices sound distinct is challenging, and I found this to be a job well done.
The concept. Three young women who have to team up to win a tech competition? Hell yeah, sign me up for that! I was on board from the first paragraph of the blurb.
Pulse. What a strange concept for an app - something that measures your overall influence on the internet and gives you a score. Websites like that exist (like Klout, for example - although Klout no longer exists, so...), but they're nothing like how Pulse is described in the book. It was annoying and interesting to think about the concept of the app in the real world - what if everything you did online boiled down to just one number? WEIRD.
Dislikes/Problematic Content
I thought the representation in this book was pretty well done, especially considering the last review I wrote. So that's a positive. But honestly, I wasn't super impressed with all of the writing itself. Maybe I'm getting a little spoiled - some of the books I've read recently have been insanely good on the prose front. My biggest complaint here was that some of the dialogue was super stilted, to the point where it was unrealistic. Did it keep me from reading the book? Nah. But it did bring me out of the story a little bit in parts.
Rating
A reminder of the rating scale:
Red = DNF, I hated everything
Orange = Ugh, no thank you
Yellow = I mean, I’ve read worse, but there were problems
Green = This was good!
Blue = Oh my gosh, I loved this book!
Purple = This is the unicorn of books and I will be rereading it until the binding falls apart and EVERYONE should be reading it!
This is one of those stories that I am always more than happy to advocate! Young women following their career-sense, chasing after a STEM goal - I'm ABOUT that. My only complaint, truly, was some of the writing. So with all of that in mind, I'm giving Screen Queens a GREEN rating. It's good, but it could have been written a little better.
Thank you to the Fantastic Flying Book Club and Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, and for allowing me to be part of this blog tour. I always enjoy myself. :)
Giveaway!
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Happy reading!