Skip This One, Girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                      I am doing everyone on here an enormous favor.  Save yourselves the trouble, and don't bother reading this. Or you will be disappointed as I was.

                                       This is one of the worst cases of second novelitis, I have come across in quite a while.  And I was not expecting it, because Jessica Knoll's first novel, "Luckiest Girl Alive" was so compelling--and has been optioned for production by Reese Witherspoon--I could not wait to read her next one.  I had such high hopes for this.

                                        But it is so derivative.  Remember the 'SVU' episode, "Assault Reality," where Michael Gross and Wendy Malick played a pair of sleazy Reality TV producers exploiting young girls and their sexuality, where a rape occurs?   Well, this is almost the same thing, except it is known, from the outset, that a girl named Brett is killed.  The novel goes back and forth in time, but that is not its problem.  The problem is Knoll cannot decide if she wants to write a suspense thriller, or a chick lit piece, in the tradition of Lauren Weisberger.  Much of the book is the latter, and she is not nearly as good at it as Weisberger, so when the plot does ratchet up, the reader doesn't care a bit, just as long as the book gets finished.  I did manage to finish it; but some may not have my patience, and won't.  At 343 pages, I thought I could make it.  Had it gone 400 pages, or over, I am not sure I would have completed it.  Nor would I have cared.

                                        There are two problems with second novels.  They never live up to the first, especially if that book has been lauded.  And it makes one avoid the next work, which could end up being as good as the first.  Maybe better.

                                           Get your act together, Jessica.  Or you will soon be out of the writing game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!