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A review by liralen
Leading Lines by Chantel Guertin
3.0
Warning: untagged spoilers ahead.
In the third installment of Pippa's story, we get considerably more follow-through than in book 2—Leading Lines picks up storylines from both of the previous books. I am still not convinced that the series wouldn't have been better served by fewer (longer) books, but I'm intrigued by some of what does and doesn't happen in Leading Lines. Some of it pans out as I'd expected, and some of it doesn't.
Take the romance: Pippa's relationship with Dylan is rather predictably doomed (oh, Pippa. You don't get to be so green-eyed about Muse (Muse?) when you haven't even told your boyfriend that you're now spending lots of time with your ex-nemesis, who happens to have a thing for you), but a lot of it comes down to him trying to move away from childish things. I wasn't terribly keen on that, honestly—I mean, yes, I'm all for portraying the very real fact of teenage breakups, and people growing apart and so on, but he feels like a very different character than in the two previous books. (To be fair, that's probably a large part of the point: he doesn't feel like the guy Pippa fell for.) I was, however, quite amused to note that not only does Pippa sometimes read as very high school indeed (e.g., Our first school dance together as BF-GF (56)), but Dylan's more 'mature' persona is also pretty...stereotypical? That's not a criticism of the book—I find it quite funny that in his efforts to be all mature he's kind of turned into a jerk.
This is not my most coherent review ever, huh.
Anyway, the other interesting thing about the romance is that Ben and Pippa aren't a thing by the end of the book. Oh, Ben's still a completely different character than he was in the first book (a theme among the male leads?), but Pippa's too busy being miserable and post-breakup-y to want anything more than friendship with him at the moment. If the series continues, I'd fully expect them to end up together at some point, but for the moment...well, it's interesting and fairly unusual in contemporary YA lit for books to end as this one does, so I remain intrigued.
Also, there's another fictional Harlequin in this one: His Mistress's Baby (162). Says something about Harlequin titles that I had to look that up to make sure it was indeed not actually a book (yet)...
In the third installment of Pippa's story, we get considerably more follow-through than in book 2—Leading Lines picks up storylines from both of the previous books. I am still not convinced that the series wouldn't have been better served by fewer (longer) books, but I'm intrigued by some of what does and doesn't happen in Leading Lines. Some of it pans out as I'd expected, and some of it doesn't.
Take the romance: Pippa's relationship with Dylan is rather predictably doomed (oh, Pippa. You don't get to be so green-eyed about Muse (Muse?) when you haven't even told your boyfriend that you're now spending lots of time with your ex-nemesis, who happens to have a thing for you), but a lot of it comes down to him trying to move away from childish things. I wasn't terribly keen on that, honestly—I mean, yes, I'm all for portraying the very real fact of teenage breakups, and people growing apart and so on, but he feels like a very different character than in the two previous books. (To be fair, that's probably a large part of the point: he doesn't feel like the guy Pippa fell for.) I was, however, quite amused to note that not only does Pippa sometimes read as very high school indeed (e.g., Our first school dance together as BF-GF (56)), but Dylan's more 'mature' persona is also pretty...stereotypical? That's not a criticism of the book—I find it quite funny that in his efforts to be all mature he's kind of turned into a jerk.
This is not my most coherent review ever, huh.
Anyway, the other interesting thing about the romance is that Ben and Pippa aren't a thing by the end of the book. Oh, Ben's still a completely different character than he was in the first book (a theme among the male leads?), but Pippa's too busy being miserable and post-breakup-y to want anything more than friendship with him at the moment. If the series continues, I'd fully expect them to end up together at some point, but for the moment...well, it's interesting and fairly unusual in contemporary YA lit for books to end as this one does, so I remain intrigued.
Also, there's another fictional Harlequin in this one: His Mistress's Baby (162). Says something about Harlequin titles that I had to look that up to make sure it was indeed not actually a book (yet)...